 Welcome to the Knuckleheads of Liberty. One of the first topics we wanted to bring up, we just had a shooting not too long ago here in Sacramento and there's been several recently as well too throughout the nation. But one of the crazy things is every time there's a shooting, especially nowadays in this last few years, everybody talks about the gun but nobody seems to care about the shooter and it seems like in a lot of cases with criminals we just kind of let them right back out on the street. It almost seems like, so Sam, what's that all about? I know you guys have some articles. In fact, I think we have one to share up there. You guys have an article on your website about this too. So, okay. Yeah, Sam, so you want to take us through a little bit of this? Sure. You know, you're absolutely, first of all, it's a real honor and a pleasure to be on with you guys. I think the world about what you guys are doing and you're so much fun and so it's a pleasure to be with you. But this topic is super important. The fact of the matter is every time there is some sort of a gun violence tragedy that happens anywhere in the country, the leftist anti-gunners use that as an opportunity to promote their typical agenda on gun control. They haven't been able to pass either at the ballot box or through the legislative process, but they just can't let these tragedies go to waste without using them as a springboard to promote more gun control. It's fascinating that the shooting that took place in Sacramento, immediately the governor and the mayor of Sacramento came out and called for more gun control. We've got to get rid of ghost guns. We've got to get rid of assault weapons. We need universal background checks. We need that, all things that we already have here in the state of California, number one. And number two, as soon as they found out that this was not actually what is typically characterized as an act of random gun violence, but it was actually a gang-related shooting, the news quit. They stopped. They stopped reporting on it. Why? Because it doesn't fit the narrative for what they're trying to do in taking away the guns from law-abiding citizens, because they know full well that there is nothing they can do to prevent criminals or those people who have evil in their heart and are willing to use that intent to create some act of evil violence. They can't keep them from finding some sort of a weapon, whether it be guns or cars or fertilizer and diesel fuel, whatever they need to commit their acts of evil. So the shooting here, it didn't fit the narrative and now you've heard almost nothing. And you're right. Gun Owners of California was created by Senator H. L. Richardson in 1975 and we have maintained the same motto. We are a committee dedicated to crime control, not gun control. And in saying that, we testified before the legislature, we talk to anybody who wants to listen, we talk about it in our lawsuits and our amicus briefs, that as long as the policymakers focus on guns or the implements of crime and ignore the human element, you are going to continue to see gun violence. And frankly, the blood of the innocents lies on their doorstep and not ours. Because we know that far more often, law-abiding citizens use guns to successfully defend themselves and prevent from being a victim. You know Sam, that is what you're saying is so true and I so totally agree with it. But even the expression gun violence is problematic because the left always speak about gun violence. Like if a gun does just jump out of a case or jump off somebody holster, just jump out there and start shooting people at random. They never talk about the fact that it's a criminal. Just like you said, it's a criminal committing the violence, not the gun itself. The criminal is using a gun to commit violence against another human being. But they never talk about that. But you're so right about this and I so much agree too. But I wish we would stop using the expression gun violence because it's not a gun. It's a person, just like you said. Leon, it would be the same as if we were to start using the term car violence. Beer violence or whiskey violence or knife violence. You're absolutely correct. And we work very hard to be as careful as we can with the terminology because it is important. And you're absolutely correct that it is a lazy expression to use gun violence as opposed to something like a crime committed by a criminal act committed by an individual that needs to be dealt with. There need to be consequences. Something that you said earlier, Jason, is absolutely true. We have a revolving door of criminals who are committed to committing crime. We know that of the people that we release from prison and we are releasing them earlier and earlier, at least 50% of them commit another act of violence and are brought back to prison within a very short period of time of their release. So if we wanted to cut the crime rate in the state of California by 50%, all we would have to do is keep those people in prison for a longer period of time. But that is anathema to our present policymakers and our governor. They want to let these people, it's not their fault. It's the gun's fault. It's society's fault. They were raised by poor mothers or underfunded schools or something like that. They do not place the blame where it belongs and that is squarely on the shoulders of the people who commit crimes. One thing too is that we often see this with government, especially if you've sort of got that liberty vision. You can kind of see these government failures stack up one after another. But the prisons, we spend top dollar, and this is kind of getting into another whole topic, but we spend top dollar on the prison and the reform rate is so terrible that we wind up letting the people back out there. Oftentimes they might be worse criminals than when they came in. I think we'd have the top rates of turning these people into productive citizens. Instead, they're coming back out and our solution is, well, let's jump down with the government and take away people's guns too because, oh my God, these people are violent when we let them out. It just seems crazy that one failure after another, just like dominoes, and government jumps in with another solution constantly. I hate to be on the soapbox about that, but maybe one of you guys wants to jump in on this. No, but the left always just go to woods instead of actual policy because we have changed the wood, the Department of Prisons or whatever it used to be called before. Corrections, and it doesn't correct the wood. Corrections, and it doesn't correct anything. It doesn't correct anything. We just have criminals being cycled through the system and returning there as often as they can. Even in that case, you were talking about Jason and Sam in the case of the shooting in Sacramento. Even in that case, I think one of the guys who have been arrested was somebody who had been recently paroled and he had served less than half of a 10-year sentence. That's a long record also. Yes, even the district attorney from Sacramento had written a letter to the parol board saying that if you let this guy out, he has absolutely no remorse. He will kill somebody. He will commit more crimes if you let him out. And what did the parol board do? They let him out and the words of the district attorney were unfortunately they came true. They were probably prophetic. We have to change the mentality. The people who are willing to commit these crimes, whether it's a hardened lifetime criminal, whether it's somebody who is mentally deranged or pure evil, they know that the consequences for committing their acts, their criminal acts are not severe enough to prevent them from doing that. Oh, so I spent a few years in prison but it's almost like going to occupational training. You go in there and you learn how to perfect your craft for committing crimes and joining gangs and doing all of these things. And maybe I'll learn how to do some woodworking in order to get some points to get out of prison early. But the penalties are not such that they're unwilling to commit these crimes. And back when we had a penal institution as opposed to a correctional or rehabilitation institution, our crime was steadily dropping over 20 years. Our crime rate and especially the homicide rate in America and in California were on a steady decrease. And then we changed the dynamic of our institutions and now we are on a dynamic rise in crime. So I mean it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a knucklehead to really see what the facts are. But the unfortunate thing about all of this is that these leftist politicians, they are not connecting policy, whether it's early release or whether it's being soft on crime. They are not connecting policy to the recent rising crime that we are seeing. They are making no connection between these two things. And who is suffering for this? The law abiding. That's who's suffering for this. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness always and forever.