Welcome to the live shoot podcast. My name is Jeff Dowdell and I've been a licensed firearm dealer for the last 17 years and this podcast is about all things related to the second amendment as well as anything else going on in the world or a sports story or anything else I might find interesting. So welcome, welcome, welcome. So a lot going on this week and Why could I talk about? One story jumped out at me and I thought I would share it because this is really kind of what this podcast is about in a sense. So there was a primary runoff here in Texas between Tony Gonzalez, US House Rep, and Brandon Herrera, who is a Gun and influencer, YouTuber AK guy on Twitter does some great videos and things and Gonzalez won and it was a referendum and it just shows that gun owners. Don't get out to vote. In this article, it the, the results for Gonzales was 15, 023 votes. Herrera was 14, 616. 407 votes. So they do some analysis over census and they say there's, you know, 575, 000 people, people over 18 in the, in their district the last time they counted. Even factoring out foreign nationals and illegal aliens who aren't supposed to vote, that's still an order of magnitude of eligible citizens voluntarily disenfranchising themselves. So we had, you know, 500, 000 people and roughly 30, 000 voted. And if you look at, you know, gun ownership, which can be tricky, the Texas Tribune noted in a 2022 analysis that from 1980 to 2016, 46 percent of Texans on average had a firearm in their household. Then factor in the District 23 majority is Republican down the line, President, Senators, and Congressmen, and it's hardly a wild leap to conjecture that. 408 more votes for Herrera were more than doable. Gonzales, not great, been horrible for the second amendment. Herrera would have been a great candidate to move in there to further solidify our position to protect our second amendment rights. And if that is what's going to happen this November, we're in trouble. We have got to get gun owners out to vote. If, if, if, if it's true, really. There's numbers that at least half the households have guns in their house now many of them are and many of those are Democrats And if you want to protect your Second Amendment right you're gonna have to get out to vote and in this article they Break out the different what they Believe the different groups of firearm owners are there there are what they call the FUDs They're hunters and sports shooters who neither aren't involved in politics nor are they Don't get involved unless it's their ox being gored and are willing to throw the evil black rifle owners under the bus and worst of all, fuds for Biden and their ilk. If they're not persuaded by now that their turn in the barrel will come, chances are our efforts to recruit them will fall on deaf ears. This group is very concerning. They're gun owners, but they don't really care. Another group is resistant to persuasion. They are the T I N V O W O U T IN V O U T ERS. Those are, if, if, there is no voting our way out of this. Ultimately they might be right. Who knows? But, those are ones that, Don't think that just voting is going to solve any problems. Then there's the third group. The third group offers promises for improvements, gun owners who attempt in various degrees to stay informed and involved. We're talking a mixed bag though some. Immersed in activism, joining national and state gun ownerships, and spreading the word, and others limiting their contribution to angry comments, and and the other articles. Everyone in this group knows work needs to be done, but not everyone lends a shoulder to the will. So we'll see grassroots efforts when 10 percent of the members do 90 percent of the work. So this is part of what I think our group is. I think we're some of this group, and we've got to reach into these other two groups and, and Bring in more gun owners that are willing to stand up and fight. It says the Democrats beat us at organizing just about every time. And that is true. And then we've got the worst of the worst, the established Republicans. And this is one of those things that are dis concerning. It's the established Republicans, the Biden bipartisan gun ban bill backer, Tony Gonzales got a big boost when NRA A rated governor Greg Abbott endorsed him instead of the red meat 2A Brandon Herrera. And now Tony's out there doubling down on the Betrayal with CNN. Okay. So when November rolls around, what are gun owners going to do? Vote for the gun grabbing Democrat? It's concerning. You know, Abbott voting for, endorsing him. That's a problem. You know, Abbott's in a position, you know, here he is, Tony Gazelle's established Republican, and he's the established government, governor, but we've got to do better. The second amendment, Gun owners out there have to get out to vote. If we get out to vote, this is a no brainer. We will get rid of Biden, but if we don't, we're very well going to be stuck with him. And that means things could get very worse for all of us. And even all these other groups that don't really seem to care, they're going to feel the pinch. Now, another article. that I saw and this is one that I've been feeling. This was in the reload and they talk about as election years gun sales fall and I've noticed this as well. I don't do sales but I do transfers so I can, you know, I can track, track along as well with my business and it says the new industry analysis of May 2024 FBI background check numbers found that 1, 809, 117 were related to gun sales. Okay that's down 7. 2 percent from the previous May, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. It's also the month's lowest adjusted background check total since 2019. The drop in monthly gun related background checks marks a continuum of the firearm market slide over the first half of 2024. Similar analysis of adjusted background check data for March and April revealed a year over year decline. Meanwhile, gun checks appeared to have declined month over month since March as well, with May posting nearly 400, 000 fewer adjusted checks. And this is, this is, and this article talks about, this is unusual Election years are usually a boom in gun sales. And so I am not sure what this is, what this means. And typically it wasn't even, you know in my experience, depending on who, who was the dominant candidate. And that was going to win. Gun sales just went up because of the unknown. Those of us that support our gun rights were afraid that the Democrat was going to get in and started enacting laws. And because a lot of them campaign on, you know, assault weapon bans and things like that. So. You know, it could be the economy. I don't know. I doubt it. The first year, first election, present election I was involved in as an FFL was 2008 and that was a horrible time. The economy was horrible and Obama was elected. And I remember the day after the election, even a little bit before my request for transfers just went through the roof and a lot of people were still picking up guns they ordered shortly after the election. 18 months later, because the manufacturers got so far behind. So the economy at that time had very little influence over the fear that people had that this new president was going to come in and take away our guns. So are we not afraid of Biden? Do we have confidence that Trump is going to win? I don't know. I don't know what the gun sale indicator is. It has me concerned that we're again, as I said before, that gun owners are sitting on their hands. And they're not going to be doing anything in November. Because they either don't care, they don't think it's going to do any good, or They just, they don't care. They don't think it's going to do any good. Are they, they're just not involved and they don't see what's going on. So that's what the point of this podcast is. Get the message out. You know, we, I don't want us to be you know, in an echo chamber, just talking among ourselves, talk to people that don't, aren't gun owners. See what they say. It's important to get the word out. We've got to get. These are voters out and vote in November because if we have 40 more years of Biden, I guarantee you, he will be coming after our guns. They're doing it. They're trying to figure out every way that he's using the ATF. And now, you know, no telling the FBI, no telling what they're going to start trying to do to confiscate our guns and attack those of us that support the second amendment. So two concerning articles to me. I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but we have got to get out and show our force because if we do, we're a big force and we can change things. So get out, vote, get your neighbors to vote, family, friends, everybody. They need to vote, vote, vote, action, action, action. So take care and have a great day.
