Welcome to our podcast, four ordinary Americans tackling hot issues without letting the conversation divide us. In terms of political tribes, my co-host and producer Byron Odion leans very Blue and I lean very Red; together we are activists for better civil discourse. We are walking the Braver Angels talk and sharing it with you.
On April 2, 2025 we focused on firearms, gun control and the 2nd Amendment, joined by Gregory Mengel, Raven Odion and Roger Haynes.
Both sides have a plethora of facts about firearms and gun violence backed up by statistics and studies. In a special report to Brandi Kruse at [un]Divided, I tackled some of the misinformation commonly used by the anti-gun side. You can find that commentary on Patreon here.
But if I really want to persuade someone to work with me on positions or policy, the conversation cannot start with facts and truth. It has to start with trust, with building connections, and with understanding how different life experience has shaped points of view.
We’re modeling that behavior in these Leaning Into the Divide podcasts, building trust, listening to understand before seeking to be understood, and always (so far) finding some areas of common ground
Feel free to suggest a spicy topic and challenge us to take it on!
For those who prefer reading to listening, here is the lightly edited transcript:
Sue Lani Madsen: Welcome to our podcast, Braver Angels. I lean Red, he leans Blue, and we are hosting a series of conversations on interesting and potentially divisive topics with a balanced group of folks.
Today I'll be joined by Roger Haynes as the two Red leaning folks and Raven Odion and Gregory Mengel will be on the Blue leaning side. Last conversation we let the Blue Team go first, [Red goes first this time] and we're doing this fishbowl style. Roger and I will have a conversation for 10 to 15 minutes about our attitudes towards today's topic, and then Gregory and Raven will take over.
We decided this was a good time to discuss the 2nd Amendment. There are a number of firearms related bills working their way through the Washington Legislature, and in other areas. And we want to start with that. The interesting thing is that in the lead up to this we kept misspeaking between the First and the Second Amendment.
Which leads is which me to an interesting story, if you don't mind if I start?
Roger Haynes: No, sure, great to be here
Sue Lani: I'm glad you could join us from Texas. I was a candidate for the Legislature in 2004, I had not been involved in politics at all and I'm running as a Republican, because that was the party that fit better. But my issues were health care, the administrative state, and what I was seeing that doing to my clients as an architect. I was all about small business regulation and total focus over that way.
It had been a very long day of campaigning, and I had been doorbelling, driving a huge district, and show up in the evening at a Republican fundraiser. A neighbor that I know well came over and said “so what do you think of the Second Amendment?”
My mind went totally blank
Roger: Hmm.
Sue Lani: So I stalled for time and said, “I'm in favor of the entire Bill of Rights” while I was looking for clues, and then finally it clicks in. I'm looking at his ball cap, and it's an NRA embroidery on the ball cap. And then I remember which one we were talking about. At that point I realized I needed to have an opinion, and I needed to pay more attention. I just never had. And so I did so. That's the lead in to where I come to my comments on the Second Amendment. But, Roger, I'm going to stop talking and let you tell me where you come from.
Roger: That's so interesting. I do think that is a great piece of advice for all of us. Whatever side you lean on, you know it's important to kind of read up, and at least know a little more than just sound bites right? A friend of mine had always said, “Don't let other people feed you your food like a baby bird, like a mom does for baby bird.” We should try to dig into it, too, as much as we can. I mean, I'm a 2A proponent, Second Amendment guy, I grew up in in Virginia. My dad was in law enforcement, and my dad always used to tell me stories about going to school with his .22 and they literally would kill game to eat for dinner. They had outhouses back then. The whole culture back then is so different, you know. But I was in scouting, and loved going out in the woods with my dad and plinking with his .22 or shotgun. That's probably where I developed an affinity for guns. As I got older, I think in college days I was probably more liberal, didn't know necessarily where I stood.
Then went into the military at 19 and became a law enforcement guy, so was right there, involved with weapons and armory, and shooting and defense and safety and all that stuff. And through the years just really loved shooting, love the shooting sports. I found a couple of nonprofits that I actually work with to raise funds for the foundation we built events for grant money. We try to get grants for women's shooting sports. 4 H, high school shooting programs, collegiate Junior ROTC. And for ROTC groups to be able to afford the equipment and teach people to be safe shooters for life.
I own guns. I love going out and shooting. I'm also a concealed carry guy as well so I'm pretty deep in the firearms world, but not a super nerd on it. I couldn't tell you about every single gun, which trigger I have but I do support organizations that support the Second Amendment if that makes sense.
Sue Lani: It makes sense. I ended up, because my intro was looking at the philosophy, meant that I looked at it very analytically. And so I read a lot of stuff, and being a small L libertarian, I was attracted to the Cato Institute analysis.
Sue Lani: Which is pretty clear that the Second Amendment says we have a right to bear arms, and why. And I found that the most compelling, and so I found when I answered the NRA's questionnaire the second time I ran for office in 2,008, when I was more prepared, I was wondering how I was going to come out and I realized I had turned into a right wing gun nut, because my position is very strongly libertarian.
I understand the reason why the Second amendment is there, that doesn't mean I don't recognize there are problems that we have. I just wrote a I just wrote a piece for, undivided for Brandi Kruse at undivided on the permit to purchase. That's a law being proposed in Washington, and can you imagine, if we treated the right to bear arms and the right to vote in the same way . . . in this state people had a fit if someone had to find a postage stamp in order to send their ballot back, because that was putting a poll tax on voting. And so then here the state is very happy to pile fee after fee after fee onto legal gun owners that will have no impact on crime, it's irrelevant to that but it reflects an attitude towards firearms.
We own firearms. My husband was a hunter when we married, and I do have a concealed carry permit, because I have at different times in my life felt that I was under some threat, and I needed to have that protection.
I think on one of our [chat] threads, somebody said we should ask everybody to describe what guns we have. And I said I think that's a question that we would probably answer very differently, like, I'm not going to tell you!
Roger: Right. Yes, you can find out two ways. We can go shooting together, or the bad way
Sue Lani: Yeah.
Roger: Yeah, yeah, I know. No, that that's interesting. So I recently won the opportunity to get a suppressor, right? And when people think of silencers or suppressors they go “that's the guy that shot the healthcare executive. He had a silencer. Scary.”
Sue Lani: They don't really silence. Too many people have seen too many movies. People in movies handle weapons completely irresponsibly, in most cases.
Roger Haynes: Well, we've seen that recently in Hollywood, too, yeah, which is a terrible situation. When you mentioned tax, you know, I know there's laws in DC going through right now, possibly to avoid the ATF tax. As a gun owner, a veteran, I was in prior law enforcement, I'm always active in trying to stay, safe and trained up with firearms. I have to pay another fee to get this suppressor. I have to go through two checks, ATF and local law enforcement, even though I've had a secret and top secret security clearance. I have a driver's license. I'm a voter. I've had multiple FBI background checks before.
It's a lot of work to do that when like you said, I think sort of the gun control world keeps us busy doing all the things, they load the regulations on for good people. Law abiding citizens. But the crime control for the bad guys getting the guns isn't there. You know what I mean?
Sue Lani: Yeah.
Roger: And that's what's really frustrating and having to pay more money for something where it's not really solving the crime problem. I'll have a trust set up so one of my sons gets the suppressor when I die, legally, through the ATF. I paid the money and I will have gone through three background checks.
And it's interesting, in Washington I have a friend who used who lived there. He worked at one of the major hunting fishing stores and during the riot period a few years back people were buying guns in droves in Washington state. He said he said it was crazy. He could tell that they weren't gun owners. They were new at it. They were trying to buy weapons that were huge cannons. They weren't smart on the equipment needed like they wanted to buy magazines that were preloaded. They were buying the gun, going through the checks, and there was a two check system and a lot of the folks, he had said, and this is just him, I'm not saying take this as gospel, but he said a lot of people were mad that they actually voted for that second background check in Washington because it affected their ability to get the gun as quickly as they felt they needed it during that crazy time where the country was kind of on fire. I bring that up because you're in Washington, and I think a lot of people wish maybe they didn't vote for that because, it affected their abilities.
Sue Lani: I think where we have a lack is in education. I realized, as I thought about the situation, my father actually did teach me the basics of safe gun attitude, right? Which is, you always assume it's loaded. You never point a gun at anything you aren't willing to kill or destroy, and do not touch the World War II rifle that's leaning in the corner of the storage room in the basement. Okay, I didn't touch. And I understood those first two rules, that was pretty simple.
I actually think we should educate, our public education system should include education on all of the rights and responsibilities under the Constitution. So I'm thinking we should have mandatory gun safety classes. Let kids understand what they are, and how powerful. Let them know that the movies do it wrong, that it doesn't work like that, and that you can't pull out a gun and shoot a gun out of somebody's hand. And the consequences, the power of that firearm.
Roger: And safety, right? I mean, that's what I noticed in a couple of Braver Angels meetings one time where we did a fishbowl here in San Antonio. I know we don't have too much time to go, but I kind of understood that other side's perspective. One lady was a nurse, maybe 58, or 60 years old, and she'd never been around guns. And that's why she was really afraid of the gun community, because she'd had never experienced, never had been around people or gone to a range. It was just a, you know, unsettling feeling. And I kind of understand that now and why people as why do you need that gun?
Sue Lani: I can understand that it can be a big mystery. I did take a course, and I did go to range, and I have found that the legal gun owners that I've interacted with are some of the most safety conscious people I have ever met. So I can see that education makes a big difference, which is why I'm kind of pushing that. Now I'm going to wrap us up here, and we'll turn it over to Gregory and Raven and see where their attitudes come from and what they're thinking about.
Roger: Sounds, good, awesome.
Sue Lani: Okay, take it away. Raven and Gregory
Gregory Mengel: Hi, Raven.
Raven Odion: Hi Gregory.
Gregory: So yeah, tell me about your relationship with firearms.
Raven: Hmm . . . When I was 5 years old, maybe 6. Don't remember exactly my age. My stepfather held a gun on myself, my mother and my sister and clearly I remember I'm sitting on my mother's lap. My stepfather's holding. It's a handgun he's holding the gun on us. I don't know what happened before, and I can't remember what happened after. I remember that my mother was coercing me to go sit on his lap and tell him I was sorry and I didn't want to do it. And I kept resisting, and she kept coercing. And finally I went and sat on his lap and told him I was sorry. That's my first experience with a gun.
My second experience with a gun, not surprisingly, it happened again. I was 13 and had a handgun held on me again. I'm really fortunate I never saw anybody get shot. Then in that same neighborhood a young man down the street from me. I think he was 15. I was probably 13 at the time, he had run away from home, somehow got a handgun, and in another state pulled it out, and a cop shot him. It ruined the cop's life. Obviously it ruined the kid's life because he died.
Then, during the George Floyd era, I was in the streets like other people in a very small town. It was very safe here in the valley but in Okanagan Valley I didn't go to a protest because the rumor was there was going to be people with long guns, and there were, and they were lining the roofs of the buildings with long guns, watching the protesters walk down the street.
So all of those experiences in my life have led me to not have a good feeling about the guns, and I don't understand when I have to have a driver's license, I have to pay every year for my salon license, yet gun owners have a problem with licenses, fees, permits, or whatever.
This morning when I woke up, and I was totally awake, I was not asleep, this image came to me of someone with a bullet wound in their stomach, and I had to put my hand on it to keep them from bleeding. I'm wide awake. But I'm having this vision. And I'm going. Where is this coming from? I'm like, Oh, we're going to talk about guns today.
During Trump-1 guys were carrying in the grocery store had their pistols, you know, tucked in their belts and hadn't seen that before. To me it is a sign of aggression and intimidation when that is happening, and you would think as a woman, a rape survivor, an incest survivor, a survivor of these situations with guns. I would want a gun. I want to protect myself, but that's not how I see the world. I see the world of . . . that I would be drawing danger to me via that weapon.
So that's what I meant, Gregory. Tell me where you're at
Gregory: Yeah, thanks for sharing all that. That was, that's some pretty powerful testimony. So my relationship with guns is a little bit later. I do. I do have a couple of stories. One is that my family had guns. My uncles had guns. They hunted. My dad had a couple of guns. He was a marksman in the military so like it wasn't a big deal one way or the other. It wasn't really politicized at all. Of course this was the seventies.
But I do remember one incident where I was hanging out with my neighborhood friends. This kid, who was about my age 13 at that time, and his little brother and I had let it slip that my dad had a gun, and he was like pressuring the shit out of me to get it out like, show it to me. Let's get it out. Let's shoot it, really hardcore peer pressure, and he was crazy like he's still crazy to this day. I hear stories about how his life turned out, and I'm really glad that I resisted that peer pressure, because I don't know if he would have had a chance to grow up to be crazy, or if I would have had a chance to grow up, or his little brother. Who knows what would have happened, you know? Just who knows? Because it's probably not cool that I could have, I probably should not have had access. But my dad never thought about it.
And then my other gun violence story is that my adult cousins, my cousin and her husband who had been married for like 20 years, were separated, and the male cousin went into a bar and shot the female cousin and the man she was dancing with in this bar, and spent the next 20 years of his life on death row. But not because, I'm pretty sure, probably not because he shot his wife, but probably because the man she was dancing with was an off-duty police officer. And so that may have impacted the way they pursued the case. Which is fine, I don't think it's okay to shoot police officers. I'm not a big fan of death penalty. But that's not the topic for today.
Besides those two stories, my relationship to guns has been pretty laissez faire. I don't own a gun. I personally don't feel like I would be safer having a gun. I feel like if I had a gun in my house somebody would break in and use it to shoot me. And I don't really feel like I'm in a lot of danger, even though I live in Oakland, and Oakland is supposed to be a super dangerous place. It doesn't feel that way to me. It helps that I'm a man. But that doesn't help that much when somebody breaks into your house. But I'm not having that issue lately.
Anyway, I have a pretty relaxed attitude about guns. What I have a lot of objections around is the way that gun culture overlaps with fragile masculinity in the way that some subsets of men see having a gun as a sign of what a big man they are, and they will, “I'm a tough guy, look at the size of my gun, or look at how many guns I have,” or whatever that just feels pathetic to me. But it feels like it's the energy that drives a lot of the more extreme attitudes around guns.
That said, I'm in favor of let's say, common sense gun control, that's like a trope. And you know, I heard Sue Lani and Roger talking about some of the issues around, arguably over-regulation like too many fees. We don't have to pay fees to vote. I think I think one could make an argument that there's a pretty big difference between voting and having a gun in terms of the dangers and risks to society, and in terms of the kinds of problems.
There are costs to widespread gun ownership and the fees are intended to help offset that which doesn't mean that I agree every fee is a good fee. Right? I think they should be rational, and I'm totally in favor of debating which fees are rational, and I don't think we should levy fees because we don't like guns. I don't want to see that.
So my question when I think about people who have a pretty pro-gun attitude and suspicions around gun regulations, and I want to ask, which, where? Where do we draw the lines, how lethal of a weapon should it be okay to have? Are assault weapons okay? Which ones? Right? One of the things I was talking to Byron about before we got on was he has a friend who had a personal impact of a technical regulation around weapons that affected his work as a gunsmith. And his complaint is the people making these regulations don't know what they're doing. They don't understand guns.
And so my response to that is why aren't the people who know about guns at the table? And my assumption is because people like the leaders of the NRA are so absolutist about opposing those kind of regulations that they don't show up to help guide the process. They're just objecting. But all the other places where the government regulates industries or practices, the people who have the most invested in them come to the table and make sure that the regulation makes sense. I don't know how much of that assumption of mine is true, but it just occurred to me as something to think about.
And then the last thing I'll say is about right now. It's just about other realms of having an armed population where there's things like Stand Your Ground laws and the Castle Doctrine, which can also be debated sort of separate from the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment has been around for a long time, and the interpretation of it has changed over time.
But I think there's space to have public debate about how we own guns including, and I totally agree with Sue Lani about education. I don't know about all kids, but certainly anybody who owns a weapon should have to undergo some education, and I know that some people who are pretty pro-gun, don't think that there should be that kind of . . . what they would see as a restriction. I don't know how our Red folks on the call today feel about that,
Raven: Yeah, I just wanna say I forgot to mention I love meat, and I love game. Oh, my gosh! Give me some venison. Give me some elk. I'll take some bear, and the way people get those animals is they shoot them with a gun. Typically. I don't have a problem with that. I think semi-automatic weapons. I'm like, you're gonna blast your deer to pieces? That gun is designed to kill people quickly.
So I think good debate about what makes sense to keep everybody safe and responsible is, is a good thing. And I just want to make that clear because it sounded like I was like, no guns . . .
Gregory: Yeah.
Raven: . . . not where I'm at. And I'm not a person thinking everybody's gun has to be taken away, which is the story that I have heard.
Gregory: Nobody thinks that.
Raven: Yeah.
Gregory: Nobody thinks that.
Raven: Well, some people believe that.
Gregory: I mean, there are individuals who believe everything, but there's no widespread movement or Democratic party platform about taking people's guns away.
Raven: Exactly.
Gregory: I've ever heard, anyway.
Raven: No. But yeah.
Gregory: Okay, I feel like it's time to wrap up.
Sue Lani: Raven and Gregory. It's your turn now to do a little reflection on what you heard from our, Roger and I, from our conversation. What's something that you heard that surprised you, and something that you heard that might be common ground?
Gregory: I will jump in and just say the common ground I heard is around education. I really think that there's not enough emphasis put on that. I don't know what that looks like. As I mentioned in the Fish Bowl. I'm not sure how I feel about compulsory education in public schools around guns, because some people I know will object to their kids handling guns. And I just want to respect that. But I definitely believe that folks who want to own guns should have some kind of education requirement.
Sue Lani: Okay. Raven?
Raven: I heard that both of you are very responsible gun owners, that you do your best to be responsible gun owners. That I didn't hear any negative experiences from you around your experiences with guns. They all seemed very positive. I heard that there are some restrictions that feel too restrictive and cause problems for people when they either want to obtain a gun or a silencer, or just having to deal with the fees, and all of that that causes problems for gun owners. Those are the things I remember right off the top
Sue Lani: Okay, and Gregory, I would agree that I found that we were all felt that people needed to know more, and that education is a good path. And I totally respect the fact that you guys have had some very negative experiences with the misuse of firearms, and that's very powerful, and I can respect that. I respect that a whole lot more than if someone who has, like the person that Roger was talking about, somebody who has never had any exposure to guns, positive or negative, but just has a stereotypical view, that's a little harder to discuss. I feel like I could sit down and discuss these issues with Gregory and Raven, because I understand that you have experience that's valuable to bring to the table.
I heard that there was not a desire to just ban all guns, but that there was definitely a concern about how truly serious the negative consequences can be of their use or misuse, and I appreciate that. Roger?
Roger: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate the conversation, and it was very sensible, you know, that's what I love about the fish bowls, kind of takes away some of the rhetoric and you actually get to hear what the people think. And yeah, I, too, am so sorry, Raven, you went through things like that. That is heartbreaking. And you know, once it's in your hard drive. How do you forget that, so hats off for you for just being who you are today, having to go through that, you know. That's, that's hard.
I think there is definitely some interesting common ground there. When I did mention that medical person, who really was kind of fearful of guns, the one thing that I thought about while Gregory and Raven were talking, I would assume in a hospital or medical trauma setting, if you've never been exposed to guns, and you're working on triaging people and you see what the guns can do. The power of them in the emergency room that will definitely shape someone's view. And yet, at the same time, I do feel like some kind of awareness or training will help.
Not to kind of go off the topic but peer pressure. . . what Gregory mentioned about peer pressure so important, you know, that's with firearms, alcohol drugs. Fentanyl has been the talk of maybe both sides, but more one side than the other in this election. But there are some kids that were really good kids that gave into peer pressure. They tried Fentanyl once and died. They gave in to peer pressure right? Because a friend was like, “hey, let's try this.” I do feel like that's similar to the gun violence that could happen under peer pressure. Gregory, man, it's hats off for you, being strong enough to get out of that situation because that could have changed your life together. We may not be talking to Gregory today if that had gone a different way.
And so, education all that to come back to education. Maybe there could be room for a peer pressure scenario in a health class in high school to talk about the consequences of . . . you go to a friend's house. You're at a party. Right? Mom and dad are going for the weekend. You're at a party and someone has a gun in that house. How do you handle it. Do you understand what that gun will do? I mean that's eye opening. I feel like we miss those topics when we get heated on either side.
Sue Lani: I agree, Roger, that the peer pressure issue is huge. That's the kind of gun safety education that I'm talking about, that the kids know, kids are taught. And there is actually an Eddie the Eagle, the NRA actually has a program. That kind of level of safety. And it's the don't touch, and it's how serious this is, and how much damage this is. And the kids are curious. So if you make something off limits, or you never talk about it they explore, and they sometimes make some tragically stupid mistakes and we need to have educated kids to know what to do.
Gregory, you look like you wanted to say something there.
Gregory: I have a I have a couple of things just to respond to that. I also believe that parents need to be held responsible when their minor children get a hold of their guns because it's one thing to teach them. And you know, some kids just aren't responsible. They're kids right? So I really think there needs to be some accountability for the parents there.
Other comment I wanted to make was about something Raven said about people bringing guns to protest because that's a situation just to name this where the 1st and 2nd amendment are in direct conflict, because a gun at a protest has a chilling effect on speech. People won't come to the protest if there's guns there, right? Or they might not say what they might want to say, because they don't know that that person is a responsible gun owner. They don't have any reason to believe one way or the other. Did the person bringing the gun there, probably out of a spirit of intent. Why else would they bring a gun there right.
Raven: And stand on the roof
Gregory: A protest is not a generally unsafe place to be. Maybe that's debatable. The last thing I'll say is just in terms of background checks, I hear you making the point that they may be a little bit excessive, and we want it. And also we want to keep guns out of the hands of the bad guys. So that just raises the question, well, how do we figure out which is which before we sell them a gun, and you know that's the intention of the background checks, whether they're doing a good job of it or overdoing it.
Sue Lani: Yes, strengthening the background check program is probably a place for some common ground, just to make sure that the registry is up to date. There was the tragic case of the man that should not have had a gun, but his ineligibility to exercise that right was not entered into the background check system, and he ended up killing people at his wife's church. That was, that's a horrible situation. But that was a failure of the background check system. That doesn't mean that background checks are useless. It means that people make mistakes is what that means. And that was a terrible and tragic mistake.
The people who like to open carry as a sign of “Hey, look at me! I'm so powerful.” I find those people really annoying.
Roger: You know, as a 2A proponent. I probably lean with you on some of that stuff, and I know my brothers and sisters and the hardcore 2A community might wanna, you know, debate about it. But I am about the element of surprise anyways. I don't want you to know that I'm carrying, because you're going to take me out first. If you go to HEB and want to rob the place you're going to go “Well, there's a there's a guy carrying. Dummy boom, bye.” And I think it can be intimidating right if you don't have an experience with guns, and you see a guy in the checkout lane at toysRus, you're gonna be like is this okay? I don't know.
Sue Lani: Depends on what state you're in, some states it’s more common than others!
Roger: Right. Which state am I in? Yeah. And so, the other side of it is being in the military, former military guy retired in law enforcement, and people need to be trained in the gun they purchase. In my opinion, I believe in the Second Amendment wholeheartedly. But if you can't use it, if you can't troubleshoot when it malfunctions. If you know you're protecting your own life, or if you're taking your kids out shooting grandkids, that's a recipe for disaster, just like other equipment, tools.
You've got to be trained, and I can't say that everybody who buys a gun is going to be an active. subject matter expert in their firearm. That's what scares me a little bit, especially with the constitutional carry thing. Alright we can wear it on the outside. I can go from Texas to say, New Mexico. Great! Can the same guy or gal do the same thing? Do they know the weapon? Are they going to be safe? I don't know. That's a faith in the citizenry that I don't know if I have yet. Does that make sense?
Sue Lani: Yes, yes, it does. That's the education piece that that needs to be there.
Raven: Yeah, my problem is, all these responsible gun owners are fine and well, how do we address the disturbed kid that walks into the school and takes out 10 people. Or the domestic abuse guy that is allowed to have a gun and kills his wife. It's one thing when everybody is law abiding. How do we address the people who are damaged, or they wouldn't be doing this?
Roger: Mental health.
Sue Lani: You know what, Raven? One of the most compelling, to me, testimonies at the hearing on HB 1163 - which is the one that has the permit to purchase, that would stretch out the requirements and expand the requirements to even get a permit to purchase a gun, which is kind of a catch 22, because you can't actually practice with it or learn on it if you haven't purchased it yet - was County Commissioner Amanda Mckinney from Yakima, who works with domestic violence, women who have escaped domestic violence, and she said this is such a burden on them because they don't have the money. They don't have the time or the freedom. If they have just escaped, and they are potentially under serious threat, and they feel the need of being able to protect themselves.
Yes, they would like to purchase a gun and practice with it, and be prepared for self-defense, if necessary but they're blocked out by cost and time burdens that are added to them, and I think that when there's a point where those cost and time burdens are more about creating a barrier, and then that barrier is one that goes away if you have money, but it turns anybody that doesn't have money into getting a gun criminally outside the system. And so that that's an inequality of access to a basic right that has to be part of the balance, and I really wish that we had better conversations about this at the state [level], that we brought all these points of view like we're bringing in, because it tends to be only one side at the table when those laws are written
Gregory: Wanna also because you've invited in this topic of domestic violence. So we're zooming out a little bit and Roger, you brought in the idea of mental health right? So part of this conversation is also providing better protection for victims of intimate partner violence, because very often restraining orders are not enforced right?
Roger: Agreed.
Gregory: And so that puts those women usually women in much more danger. And that's the reason why they have to resort to a personal firearm to protect themselves, which might in some cases put them in more danger. And the same with mental health, not to impugn anybody on this call, but the political party that's usually pressing for more liberal gun laws are also objecting to more mental health services for the public right? So . . .
Sue Lani: No, now we're gonna have to, Gregory, we're gonna have to hold that for later, because what I'm hearing from the right is pressing for more mental health services while we've got the other side pressing for housing first before mental health. So that's an even more complicated issue to tackle!
Gregory: Well, mental health is definitely a complicated one. But yeah.
Sue Lani: The reason that I originally got my concealed carry permit was, it was a fear of a kind of domestic violence . . . spent 25 years trying to help a bipolar relative but there were sometimes when he was happy, I was an angel and when he was down. I'm the devil. And he made credible threats and I had to, we had to have a conversation about it in the family. I had to be able to protect myself, if necessary, because he already had tried to strangle me once. So you know I had a credible threat, and so I understand what that feels like to be under that kind of threat and to live that way, coming home at night and clearing the house before I settle in. There are reasons that people can want and need a firearm for personal safety. And that's why Amanda Mckinney's testimony really resonated with me, because she was talking about women who found themselves in that safe place, that same kind of place.
Raven: That seems like a perfect place to get down into the nitty, gritty and granular and say, how come we don't have programs that help women specifically, or men, because sometimes men are victims of domestic abuse? How come we don't have programs set up to help them in self-defense, whether it's guns or whatever we don't, we just go, you know that's where getting granular is so important. But that costs money to set up a program to help, then we're getting into taxes. It starts getting very knotty in terms of the thread.
Roger: I would say, too, you're spot on Raven, and I can get behind that all day. But it doesn't get votes. It doesn't keep sides fighting.
Raven: Oh, that's a whole ‘nother issue into that. Yeah, that's a whole ‘nother topic
Roger: Yeah, that's a common ground issue, I think. Maybe taking a look at victims, you could certainly get Second Amendment proponents behind that. Plenty of people would volunteer to either, you know, get their guard card and stand outside the lady's house or their shelter where they could, or train them for free. I mean, gosh, that that's so important. Yeah. And the mental health thing. I don't know a lot about that world.
Someone could have a mental health issue. go through the background check in a day or two here like in Texas, they buy the gun, and then they go commit a crime. There was no, like, necessarily documentation, right? I don't think the system necessarily knows somebody's on X medicine. Or if that medicine is specifically for this mental health situation, that's a scary thing, right? Because they don't really have a history or criminal history, or mental health history. How do we tell our representatives to do something about that?
Sue Lani Madsen: So you know what, we've got this conversation going. We've demonstrated it’s possible to discuss this and have a really robust discussion. I sure wish this happened in our legislative chambers, but we can do more of it in our own communities. We've surfaced a couple of really good issues. One is mental health, the mental health system. Man, I’ve got a whole lot of opinions on that.
Raven: And I just want to say, people with mental illness typically, are not violent
Sue Lani: Right.
Raven: I'm not trying to stigmatize people with mental illness.
Roger: Sure.
Raven Odion: But people who are damaged may not be mentally ill through diagnosis. But there's a part of them that's damaged that would allow them to take a life, those are different to me. I just want to make that clear.
Sue Lani: I think you're right, Raven. There's a difference between that kind of damaged decision making from trauma, from whatever it is, and mental health, but they do sometimes occur together as well. So that becomes very complicated, and that complicates what we all say is, we want a great background check system. And that complicates actually doing that.
So, like any good conversation we've got lots more that we could keep going on.
I really appreciate everybody joining today for a good conversation on the Second Amendment, and in Washington, the State of Washington Constitution it’s actually Section 24, which is even more explicit than the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. And now let's take this out and have this conversation with other folks you know!
Gregory: Thank you.
Roger: Great to see you guys
Raven: Safe travels, Sue Lani.
Sue Lani Madsen: Thank you.
Roger Haynes: Thanks, Byron, you technical Guru
Byron Odion: Yeah, yeah, you got it. This is beautiful, you guys, thank you.
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