Discover The DC Project With Dianna Muller

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Discover The DC Project With Dianna Muller

I am with the Founder of The DC Project. Dianna Muller is our guest. Dianna, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on Whitetail Rendezvous.

Dianna is a retired policeman. She is an international and national award winner for shooting and she’ll get into that. Let’s talk about The DC Project and the importance that everybody reading the blog needs to know about, needs to visit it and needs to support it.

The DC Project is 50 women, one from every state, going to Washington DC once a year for now and meeting our legislators as gun owners and Second Amendment supporters. You can think of us as the anti-Moms Demand Action. Moms Demand Action is well-funded and well-organized. They’ve got Students Demand Action now and I keep an eye on them because their messaging in their unit, whatever that is that’s behind them is huge and ginormous. I don’t see that coming from the firearms industry space, especially in our society where social media is censoring and squelching us. We can’t advertise on mainstream media. I’m concerned about how we can get our message out that these people don’t speak for all of the women and get people inspired to get engaged and not be the silent majority.

Thinking from the hunting side, I know from my reading research that women are the fastest-growing segment in the hunting community and its growth is over 10% a year. Let’s talk about women who are learning to shoot and getting concealed carry. That is a very robust growth industry.

I’ve heard the same thing. I didn’t know that about hunters, though. That’s awesome.

It is on hunters. Do you have any stats of the number of women per state, per nation that have said enough is enough? I hear what the other people were saying from these other groups that refuse to protect themselves. I’ll say it the way I see it and all these comments are my opinion. There are some people out there that say, “No gun to take away.” Who’s going to protect them? If you’re a single mom, getting gas in a gas station and somebody approaches you, what are you going to do mom? You should not be a victim. Part of what I understand The DC Project is empowering women not to be victims. Is that correct or am I misspeaking?

We are proponents of self-awareness and self-protection but that’s not our major goal. Our major goal is to be an action group of people who are trying to create relationships, whether it be with our legislators and going back to that messaging. Our focus going forward is going back to the state level. We feel like we’ve been doing good work. This is the fourth year that we’ve been going to DC. We’ve got a friendlier version of a President. We feel like we’re doing good there but there’s a lot of state stuff going on. Our focus is going to try to be making more of an impact. I would like for your readers to understand that this is all of our calling. If you care about the outdoor lifestyle, if you care about the Second Amendment and the firearms community, it’s super important for us to become engaged in a local level, a state level and a federal level. That’s not just legislators. That’s people in your church, in your school, at the grocery store. It’s so important for you to be seen as a gun owner and that you’re normal, friendly and creating those conversations and establishing a pro-message for the gun community.

If I meet you in a grocery store and we get to talking about that head of lettuce we’re looking at, how do you open a conversation about who you are and what you’re doing?

At the grocery store, you might be planting seeds. You might have to take it a little bit tinier and being kind to somebody. The next time they see you, they may see you in a different area that you would have an opportunity to say, “Do you go to the range? Do you want to go to the range with me?” Striking up a conversation with a stranger over a head of lettuce is a bridge too far, but being kind to them and you could wear a shirt that identifies you as some gun community person. When you do that, please don’t do that on bad days because remember, you do represent us. Watch your language. Try to be inviting. That would be my suggestion

Women do that so much better than men. There’s no question about it.

It’s outside of the comfort zone as opposed to any gender. It’s outside the comfort zone for introverts. It’s difficult for introverts to engage or start a conversation like that or be out there. It may not be a gender thing because you and I could be dropped in a foreign country and everybody would love us.

Let’s get back to The DC Project and the important. When Mia goes to see Cory Gardner, Lanny Barnes at the Hill, what is she talking to these gentlemen about?

Colorado is very well represented, especially in the hunting community. Lanny Barnes is one of the twins from the biathletes. Are you familiar with them?

No, I am not.

You have to have her on the show. She and her twin sister are three-time Olympic biathletes. When they retired from that sport, they came into the 3-gun sport but they’re both huge hunters. They would definitely fit. Lanny has come with us for the past couple of years and she’s a great representative for Colorado. What we do is we all get there. It’s traditionally about one person per state. That’s all I can manage. We’re going to build on that especially trying to get down to the state level. I bring everybody together. We have a reception and we break up into small groups.

I break these small groups up well in advance, about a month in advance of our trip to DC. Then they have their own little page that they communicate and deconflict their meetings because it’s up to every girl to make meetings with their legislators. Mia or Lanny would call Cory Gardner’s office and say, “I’m looking to come visit in DC during these time periods. When can we get a meeting?” Every girl does that. They deconflict their own meetings and they have an agenda once they get there. We get there on a Tuesday night. We have this reception and we have a powwow about what laws are talking about on Capitol Hill right now. This 2019, it was red flag laws and some extended background type of stuff. We tried to get briefed a little bit on that. Our focus isn’t there to be an expert on law. I want the girls to understand what’s up there so they can have an opinion on it.

The focus of The DC Project is to talk about the girls’ stories and make that personal connection with those offices, whether it be with a member or a staffer. We do that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning. We have meetings and if you’re not on that team, you may never see another team. It’s a small space. The odds of you passing a team in the hallway or seeing somebody in the hallway are pretty good but you stay with your small group, four or five women. You don’t want to get too big because you can overwhelm an office and you can’t talk. Not everybody can have a say. Friday afternoon, this is where your audience can tune in special because we would love to have them join us for a rally on the Capitol lawn. We were on the West lawn, which is between the National Mall and the Washington Memorial. The Capitol is on the other end and you’re right there on the Capitol lawn. It’s very powerful and beautiful. I love the symbolism of where we’re at and what we’re doing. It’s one of the only times that anybody in that area is hearing a pro-gun message. I don’t know of any other rallies that are going on in Washington DC. I wish that our community would have one. The DC Project will gain some traction and have everybody flood in on Friday afternoon for a rally.

How are you funded?

All these girls have come on their own dime and their own time completely. I would try to get some money to feed them one night. I went ahead and did a 501(c)(4). The difference between a three and a four is that the three is tax-deductible for the account contributor and a four is not. The four doesn’t have any restrictions on lobbying. Although we don’t consider ourselves lobbyists. We’re certainly not registered lobbyists. We are activists. We’re advocates. That’s not what we do, but I can see where somebody would argue that we’re grassroots lobbying. I didn’t want the headache of somebody like Lois Lerner coming after me because I was bringing in money to do this project. This year was our first year and we have a fundraiser. For the first time, I was able to pay for the ladies’ housing. That was very exciting for me to be able to at least cover a little bit of the expenses for the girls.

If somebody wanted to reach out, what’s your website?

DCProject.info. I could also give my email address as long as people don’t sell it. They could contact us there or DiannaMuller-3 Gun on Facebook and @Di3Gun on Instagram. There’s always instant messaging and direct messaging on there. @DC_ProjectFoundation is our IG page. On Facebook, it’s The DC Project.

There are plenty of ways to reach out to you. If somebody like one reader who said, “I want the ladies to have some cold chicken on me,” do they just go to your website?

We take hot chicken prizes. There’s definitely an easy way to donate. There are also work selling t-shirts. That’s one of our t-shirts. The educate over legislators in black and it has educate over the top of it. Those are the two logos that we have. We’ve got some more shirts coming. There’s a donation button there as well. These past few years, I’ve been trying to keep this small so I can manage it but I’m ready to blow it up. If these fundraisers produce something good enough, I would like to see somebody do the managing full-time. I can’t do it. I’ve got too much on my plate and I feel like that this could be so much more if I had a full-time person focused on it. I’m going to be focused on raising some money, doing some other things that are rally. I’ve been watching Moms Demand Action and David Hogg. I’m doing what I see them doing in Washington DC. Every time we go to DC, there’s always anti-messaging, whether it be on a sign, there are signs everywhere or displays. One year, there were shoes all over the lawn. Who did that? Why can’t we have something that represents our beliefs? I want to do stuff like that. I want to be visible. I don’t know if you know it but they have rallies and they have buses pull up and people get off. Everybody’s dressed alike. They do the rally for fifteen minutes. They get their pictures. I don’t even know if these people are volunteers or if they’re paid to do this.

That will orchestrate it. Everybody says, “Show up. You’re going to get $100 a day.” There are people who don’t want our lifestyle, yours and my lifestyle. They’ll do anything. Money to them is absolutely nothing. If you’re one of those people reading the blog, The DC Project is coming after you. The other thing you said and I’ll announce it. If you’re interested in getting involved in becoming the executive director, running this sucker and raising money, get ahold of Mrs. Muller directly. What’s your email address so they can do that?

My email addresses is [email protected].

There is a position and it’s up to you to get it funded so you can get paid. That’s the way it works. If you give a rip, if you’ve got the time, if you get the smarts, you’d get the Rolodex, if you got the influence then it’s about time somebody stood up as The DC Project already has, but you don’t understand how well-funded the opposition is. They’re incredibly well-funded. The people showing up could give a rip, either way, they’re getting paid. There are some women out there that have lost their children and I’m sad for you. On the other side of that thing, I would have rather been in front of that bullet and taken that bullet for their child so they didn’t have to go through that suffering. I would take that bullet and then I would be dead but your child would be alive. That’s how I think. A lot of my friends in the hunting community and the people for the Second Amendment, we would die so that your children would live. I get fired up about this because you just don’t get it. Why would I give up my life to save your child and then you rail on me in my liberties because you don’t want guns? It doesn’t compute.

They have a false sense of security because it’s going to be the gun’s fault. It can’t be the person behind the gun. I was going to tell you that our Miss Georgia, Electra Krisha Hughes, her son was murdered with firearm. She still understands that the Second Amendment applies to her. It applies to anyone, everyone and any American citizen. She comes to Washington DC with us and she tells her story which is very powerful. It takes an intellectually honest person to recognize that this instant wasn’t A plus B didn’t equal C and be able to share that. The women on our project, they are so diverse and they are so amazing with stories that are very powerful. All of us have a story but there are some who have lived through horrendous things. For them to tell their story to Dianne Feinstein’s office because she has said that she doesn’t feel like a female couldn’t defend herself with a firearm. I have somebody on the team that has defended herself successfully with a firearm. Those are the stories that are important for them to hear. It’s important for them to know. I thought of this idea. Do you remember somewhere on the campaign trail? Hillary Clinton was demonizing the coal industry. There was a time and place where she came across the table face-to-face with this man and his wife who was a coal miner.

I thought that has to be pretty sobering to have the same conversations in front of somebody that you’re calling a horrible person when obviously they’re not a horrible person. That’s always been in the back of my mind when I may not be able to change Dianne Feinstein’s mind or her position but she has to go to bed every night knowing that she’s wrong, that her constituents, whoever comes from her state have a different opinion. She’s not going to get off the hook thinking that there’s nobody challenging what we feel are her deceptives or her erroneous thoughts about gun ownership.

Somebody can get this to Donald Trump Jr. so he can get this podcast to his father. His father could hear that there are women who have a significant influence in this country and it’s going to be growing. People like me and Dianna are fed up with the media for demonizing one gun and then demonizing women. Forget about men, we’re throwing on the pile because I’m 73 and I’m white and I’m male. I don’t count. I have absolutely no rights at all. It’s ludicrous but that’s the way it is. I will protect myself. If somebody would get this to Donald Trump Jr. and then have him get a hold of The DC Project. The next time the ladies go to Washington, they will have fifteen minutes with President Donald Trump and share what they represent because if you have 50 people going back to their state, that’s not a lot of people.

The impact through social media and through the resolve and passion of these women and the story of how one lady who lost her son to a gun and she’s part of the group. Then another lady protected her self and she’s part of the group, then we have the stories. Stories are what people listen to and hear and not facts. Facts don’t count. I had a friend that said the United States has the worst murder rate in the world. If you take out five cities, United States ranked 89th in the world. Gun control isn’t the answer because all those five cities have gun control and that doesn’t work. We have issues. The DC Project, you get together, what time of year do you go to Washington? 

We try to go in June. This 2019, we went in July and praise the Lord, we got some decent weather. It was still hot but it wasn’t as hot as it could have been in July. Going back and forth, we’d put seven miles a day walking once we leave our hotel and getting to all the different meetings in all the different buildings. We were lucky this year in July.

What’s your plan in 2020? Is it in July again? 

The problem is I can’t advertise when we’re going to go because they haven’t stepped at the congressional calendar yet. They do that on the first middle of December. Once they open up that calendar, then I pick a date and then we go from there.

Stay tuned for that. It’d be neat to have 10,000 ladies on the Capitol steps. 

It’s open to anybody. The rally is open to anybody so it doesn’t have to be ladies, although that would be amazing. Especially with all of the squad and how mainstream media praises the left of the Democratic women and they won’t touch a Republican woman and everything that they’ve done. It demonizes them. It’s a left thing. It’s a political thing as opposed to a female thing. Men, you’re more than welcome. I wanted to do something. I hope The DC Project, if they learn about this, you don’t have to wait for me. You don’t have to be a member of The DC Project because it isn’t an organization. I hope it inspires people to go shake a legislator’s hands or go to a board meeting, a school board meeting, your local, your state, go visit your State Legislators. Your federal legislators have offices in their home states as well. They’ll have an office in DC. They’ll have an office in their home state. You could always meet the same people that we’re meeting in DC at home. My hope is that The DC Project inspires everyone to get engaged, be seen and heard because where we’re lacking is in our messaging and in our capabilities to be seen and heard. Did you see the Time Magazine cover last November 2018?

No. 

You should look it up. It was trifold of an artist named JR who is an amazing guy. He’s a French artist. What he did was he photographed 250-ish people. You were either pro-gun or you’re anti-gun. He put us all together in a mural and it turned out amazing. Time Magazine put it on the front cover. It was trifold. On the digital copy at Time.com/guns-in-america, it will take you to that project and there are some high profile people on the anti side. Gabby Giffords, Alyssa Milano, Eric Swalwell went round and round about his comments. Steve Scully is on the pro side. On the digital side, if you hover your mouse, your indicator over a face, you can click on it. They gave us an open mic. You can hear what my position is and why I support the Second Amendment. You can click on Alyssa Milano and you can hear what she said. Everybody deserves to be safe and I concur. It’s just my way of being safe is being able to defend myself. You think that you want to live in Eutopia. It’s interesting.

My point in that being is that going back to the messaging and that taking, Time did us right. That is the first time in my adult life that I have seen in mainstream media source give gun owners a voice. I told the editor, “This isn’t going to go anywhere because nobody’s going to talk about this.” Nobody in mainstream media is going to want to give us a face or humanize us. They want to say that we’re cold and we love our guns more than we love our kids and things like that. I didn’t think it would get a whole lot of traction but it is up for an Emmy. I don’t know when they vote for that but it’s up for an Emmy.

A story on that, I was the pro. They invited for the big reveal and remember that we didn’t know what this was going to turn out to be. We know about Katie Couric and we know how gun owners can be manipulative. We were terrified to participate in this. We had a great experience but we still hadn’t seen the finished product. New York City Time office, an art gallery, there’s going to be grand opening reveal type of thing and they invited one anti and they invited one pro. I was the one pro and then they invited a guy named Anton Lucky from Dallas, Texas area. His story is he’s an ex-gang member, ex-con and has turned his life around. Now he wants to do good for the community. He’s been told that guns are bad and his experience with firearms has not been all that positive. He came to the project with an anti-gun message.

He and I are both in the Time office and we’re taking the tour and we get along fine. I’m an ex-cop, he’s an ex-con and it’s awesome. They kick us out. They were like, “We’ll see you guys tonight.” I looked at him and I was like, “Do you want to get some lunch? Do you want to be a tourist or do something?” He’s like, “Sure.” We go out and we do New York City and have lunch. We had a very short conversation about guns and why I feel like I do. I wasn’t trying to be overly nice, just trying to be normal and get along.

Fast forward to that evening and they let us speak. There was a room of a couple of hundred people and the Time editor, the artists and all the people that worked on the project. It was one of the highlights of my career. They let me speak. I went first. I’m telling how terrified we were to take part in this and that we were scared that we were going to get Couric. It was Anton’s turn. Anton got up there and he said, “I’ve spent the day with Dianna and I’ve changed my mind,” in front of everybody. I was like, “What?” I do feel that we impacted those people that worked on the project. They saw that we weren’t what the mainstream media were portraying as us. They got a taste of reality as opposed to the erroneous bad guy thing that we’re tagged with. That was a great story.

Thanks for that. The DC Project one more time, how does somebody reach you or The DC Project?

The DC project is at DCProject.info and DiannaMuller-3 Gun on Facebook and @Di3Gun on Instagram. I’d love it for anybody to reach out to me or follow me on those platforms. I also wanted to tell you and your audience about the Ambassador Academy. The messaging in our community is important to me and that’s been placed on my heart. I’ve been doing this for several years now. I retired a few years ago and I’ve been doing it full-time for a few years as a sponsored shooter. I get asked all the time about how do you get sponsored and things like that.

Over the past number of years, I’ve been chewing on all of this. I’ve been on TV and Michael Bane’s Show, Shooting Gallery, Shooting USA and all these different shows. I was like, “I want to be better.” I want to do better when it comes to being on camera. There was no place to get training and Michael Bane was saying, “You’re doing a great job.” I was like, “Michael, I can see the finished product. I suck. Get me some training.” It never happened. I did it in 2018. Beginning of 2019, I did what’s called the Ambassador Academy. I hired subject matter experts in all of these different areas, whether it be social media or film and edit or being on camera or doing hostile communications like why does anybody need an AR-15? How do you answer that? I call up the Ambassador Academy. I put it in front of the US PSA multi-gun, 3-gun match in Florida and a buddy of mine’s house that I call Tactical Disneyland because it’s like Disneyland with guns.

I offered it to my friends and we had a whole group full of people that are learning how to be better messengers, whether it be for their partners or whether it be for the gun community at large or their own brands. That was a huge deal in my life of starting something new. It went well. We’re going to do another one in March of 2020. This one was focused on 3-gun. I put it right in front of a 3-gun match but I could switch out the live-fire portion of it. I could switch that out to anything. I could switch it out to hunting. I could switch it out to sporting clays, any discipline that goes along. The rest of the curriculum still applies the same way for social media, interviews and camera work. If anybody’s interested in that, they can get ahold of me about that as well. I love to talk to them about that.

It sounds like we need to do another show because I have another show on the Ambassador Academy. I want you to share that short story on your way to Florida and pulled in a gas station. For the ladies and guys, this is about situational awareness and you have to take care of you. 

You are your own first responder. As a police officer for 22 years, I have a lot of training in situational awareness. This happened to me on my way to the Ambassador Academy. I pulled into a gas station somewhere maybe in Little Rock, Arkansas. It’s like 6:00 in the evening but it was a very well to do area and very well lit. My guard was completely down. I was in total green mode. I’m driving a little Porsche. I got a little dog in the car. I put the gas pump in my car and I turned around and I’m getting approached by a young black male who didn’t give me any reason to think that he’s sagging. I’m dead at profiling people.

I let him come in and I asked if I could help him and I would. He had a story and I kept saying what do you want? I kept interrupting his story. His story was about him and his wife. He pointed to a car over to my right and I could see a woman in there. Everything was lining up. My husband hates that I stop and give people stuff. He thinks it’s very dangerous. This one could have been. I finally stopped him from coming more than ten feet and he’s like, “I feel like I shouldn’t come near you.” I said, “You shouldn’t come near me.” At that time, I had my gun in the car but I didn’t have it on me. I said, “You go sit in your car and I’ll see what I have.” I’m sitting in my car and I see another guy walks straight over towards him and he pushes him off. He calls him off and I was like, “Holy cow.” All the training I’ve done. I got tunnel vision on the first guy and his car and his wife. I thought that that was the only area that I had to deal with. On the other side of my car was another car and another guy that was working with him. That hit home for me because I do train for that. You can never train enough and watch your six is all I’ve got to say.

Be aware and I wish every single reader. We live in a time unfortunately, you’re not safe any place you go from a church to a mall to the grocery store to high school basketball. We all know the stories. It’s up to you to take care of you and your family. That’s my message to you. Your final thoughts?

I concur with you, be your own first responder.

With that Dianna Muller, I look forward to staying abreast and I want you to use my voice here at Whitetail Rendezvous anytime you want. That means when you get ready to go to DC, please call me and we’ll get another podcast up. The ladies, the biathletes, the twins, I’d love to have them on the show and to keep this going. I’m here to help you grow and get the word out.

I’ve got plenty of stories for you.

Thank you so much. 

Thanks for having me on.

Important Links:

• The DC Project
• Moms Demand Action
• DiannaMuller-3 Gun – Facebook
• @Di3Gun – Instagram
• @DC_ProjectFoundation – Instagram
• The DC Project – Facebook
• Donation tab – The DC Project
• [email protected]
• Time.com/guns-in-america
• Ambassador Academy
• https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=1_JCu3DX3a0
• https://www.AmmoLand.com/2019/06/the-dc-project-team-match-raising-funds-for-second-amendment-advocacy/#axzz5xvaZUBEX
• https://www.DCProject.info/
• https://www.Facebook.com/thedcproject/
• https://Time.com/magazine/us/5434315/november-5th-2018-vol-192-no-18-u-s/

About Dianna Muller

Dianna is the Founder of The DC Project.