Episode 58
Government Control vs. Personal Liberty: Why We Need to Fight! (ft. 12 Spies)
Join Kailey and John as they engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Caleb from 12 Spies about the importance of Second Amendment advocacy and the challenges gun owners face today. Caleb shares his unique journey into the gun industry, emphasizing the need for effective grassroots activism to counter the growing threats to gun rights. The discussion delves into the manipulation of language by anti-gun organizations, highlighting how terms like "gun violence" and "red flag laws" can distort public perception and policy. The trio also reflects on the significance of community events, like the GOA event in Knoxville, which fosters camaraderie among gun enthusiasts and advocates. Through this dialogue, they underscore the necessity of holding elected officials accountable and actively engaging in the political process to protect constitutional rights.
Transcript
Welcome to gun owners of America, state of the second podcast.
Kayleigh:I'm Kayleigh.
John:And I'm John.
John:And today we're joined by twelve Spies or Caleb.
John:Pleasure being on you today, my friend.
Caleb:I'm great.
Caleb:I'm great.
Caleb:Happy to be here.
Caleb:Thank you for having me on.
John:So let's get into it real quick.
John:A little bit about yourself, your background and who you are.
Caleb:Yeah, so I'm a photographer and videographer by trade.
Caleb:I got into the gun industry very late.
Caleb:It was actually during COVID and I already had a video photography background, but I decided to use those skills in this industry and now I've been able to work full time in this industry and I really enjoy it.
Caleb:I'm also a very strong second amendment advocate and I talk a lot about that on my YouTube channel, twelve spies.
Caleb:Very original.
Caleb:And I'm also a father.
Caleb:I have two kids.
Caleb:I have a wife that I've been married to for 16 years, and I'm an outspoken advocate of Christ and Kingdom.
Caleb:Also, the NFA is lame.
John:We can all agree on the NFA is lame.
John:So we're gonna start off with what we call our rapid fire questions.
John:I'm gonna give you five questions.
John:You gotta give me an answer as quick as you can.
Caleb:As quick as.
Caleb:Okay.
Caleb:I need a nasty ready something.
Caleb:Okay?
Caleb:Yeah.
John:Okay.
John:What is the most recent gun you bought?
Caleb:I bought a tink arms perune x 16 kit.
Caleb:So that's that slovenian gun.
Caleb:There's some forgotten weapons coverage on it.
Caleb:Also, polinar tactical covered them extensively, but it's basically a direct impingement slash piston hybrid gun.
Caleb:So it's kind of the slovenian scar, I guess you would call it.
John:Here we go.
John:What is your go to home defense gun?
Caleb:My go to home defense gun right now is a Strabog SP 45, a three.
Caleb:I like the subsonic capability.
Caleb:I've got a rugged obsidian 45 on it, but it doesn't have as much penetration as 300 blackout.
Caleb:People are gonna go crazy in the comments and be like, this guy's dumb.
Caleb:But I live in a neighborhood with a lot of children and I just don't want anything to overpenetrate, go through walls.
Caleb:I just wanna dump them in the target and have them stop.
John:All right, what's your EDC?
Caleb:My EDC fluctuates between I've got a lone wolf dusk 19, which is like a Glock gen three clone, but with really nice texturing and a more vertical grip on it.
Caleb:And I've got a holosun 509 t on top of it, and then I switch.
Caleb:Sometimes I carry an Rx defense gen two delta m.
Caleb:The m lays flatter, so I can conceal it better.
Caleb:So if I'm at church or if I'm, like, out around town and I don't want to print as much, I use that one.
Caleb:But if I want to shoot the best and I want to be comfortable just ripping and gripping, then I run the dusk.
John:All right, next one is pineapple on pizza.
Caleb:Yeah, yeah, I do like pineapple on pizza.
Caleb:I don't think it's sacrilege.
Caleb:I think it works, you know?
John:And then the last one is the most controversial question.
John:Are aliens real?
Caleb:I don't believe in aliens in the traditional sense.
Caleb:I believe in spiritual beings or trans dimensional beings.
Caleb:So I think there's something to paranormal activity or things that we perceive as aliens, but I don't believe that there is distant life.
Caleb:You know, the nearest star system is, like, what, 2.4 light years away?
Caleb:So you think, like, why would anybody go so far to see us when we're such a nutcase?
Caleb:Or Tim Walls would say, in knuckleheads.
Caleb:But I don't think that aliens are real in the traditional Sci-Fi sense that we think.
John:So that was our rapid fire baboom.
John:Now we're.
Caleb:How did I do, scormi?
John:About a 3.5.
Caleb:Ooh.
Caleb:Out of three.
John:Out of three.
John:Yeah.
Kayleigh:You lost him at Pineapple on pizza.
John:Yeah, you lost me on pineapple on pizza.
Caleb:Yeah.
Caleb:Well, sorry.
Caleb:You know, I guess we'll just.
Caleb:We should just shut it down now, you know, just see if ourselves control.
Caleb:Cause my answers after this are gonna be way worse than that, you know?
Caleb:So.
John:So you got into the fire space during COVID You start off with.
John:You've got that videography, photography background.
John:What equipment do you run?
John:Because we may have some, like, photography nerds out there who might want to know, like, what are you running?
John:Yeah, you make you.
John:You do, like, really, really awesome pictures.
John:Like, they're really high quality, really great pictures.
John:So what are you running on your camera setup?
Caleb:So I'm in a Sony ecosystem right now for photography.
Caleb:It's getting a little long in the tooth, but it still does what I need it to.
Caleb:I have a Sony a seven r three, which is very powerful, still very good today.
Caleb:Anything that I can't make up for in sharpness, you know, there's AI denoising and sharpening that kind of cleans everything up after the fact.
Caleb:And then my main workhorse, because I mainly do video, is Sony FX three, which is awesome.
Caleb:I just shot a wedding on it two weeks ago in very low light, and I filmed it at 12,800 ISO, which is.
Caleb:It's a dual base ISO.
Caleb:And I wasn't sure how good it was gonna look, but it turned out awesome.
Caleb:I was really impressed with the output, so.
John:Yeah, and then you go to a lot of events, right?
John:You do a ton of different industry events.
Caleb:A decent amount.
John:A decent amount.
John:What has been your favorite industry event and why?
Caleb:I mean, I don't want to.
Caleb:I'm not trying to brown nose or anything, but the Goa event in Knoxville was definitely my favorite event of the year.
Caleb:I live in Tennessee.
Caleb:I really love Tennessee.
Caleb:I moved here from California.
Caleb:I'm originally from Minneapolis.
Caleb:So I've actually lived in two states that had governors that were in the movie predator.
Caleb:So you've got Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then you've got Jesse Ventura.
Caleb:And I lived in those states when both of those people were governors.
Caleb:So if any other actors from that become a governor in a state, I'm legally obligated to move there.
Caleb:So I don't want to get sued or anything, so.
Caleb:But, yeah, no, I thought the GOa event this year was really good.
Caleb:I mean, this year, it was the first year.
Caleb:I think it's.
Caleb:It's hard to put into words how well executed it was for a first time event of that scale.
Caleb:And there was a lot of camaraderie.
Caleb:I remember when you and I talked a while back, when you were first kind of pitching it, that it was an alternative to the NRA.
Caleb:And, you know, I've gone to the NRA show before.
Caleb:I'm not a huge fan of supporting them because there's so much corruption.
Caleb:And I just don't think that they have gun owners in mind.
Caleb:Or if they do, it's kind of a secondary objective.
Caleb:So it was really great to support Goa there and to get out with a bunch of gun owners and enthusiasts and companies.
Caleb:And I think East Tennessee has a phenomenal community when it comes to the second amendment.
Caleb:I mean, they're super tight.
Caleb:You've got Opie out there.
Caleb:They do their naughty at night.
Caleb:They do a lot of training, a lot of cool events.
Caleb:So I think that was the perfect place to have it like that.
Kayleigh: to goals, we'll come to goals: Caleb:You have to.
Kayleigh:It was such a fun event for us to put on for our membership because we do everything for our members that we can, like we get up in the morning with this.
Kayleigh:We want to serve our membership.
Kayleigh:We want to protect the second amendment, but it all comes down to our grassroots advocacy, and that relies 100% on the grassroots activist.
Kayleigh:And so ahead of what is a very important election cycle for our country, ahead of a very important kind of junction in american history.
Kayleigh:We felt like it was the right time to celebrate our membership, celebrate the very hard fought battles that we've had to have, and have a rallying point with lots of training and lots of phenomenal companies and wonderful content creators like yourself where we could just celebrate our rights, celebrate the values that we hold dear, and kind of have a springboard, for lack of a better term, to go and kind of evangelize the next generation of gun owners.
Kayleigh:And whether you fall in the next generation or not is irrelevant.
Kayleigh:But the new gun owners that are coming into the space so.
John:Well, I mean, you brought up a good point.
John:You know, the new gun owners we, and I don't know if you saw this, Caleb, but I've been to a ton of shows.
John:This was a totally different demographic.
Caleb:Yes.
John:Than what a lot of people are used to.
John:And especially, it's just a big applause to our members who are really in the know.
John:I mean, a lot of people were saying they were getting great questions from our members.
John:A lot of people said that it wasn't just the same old guy who's like, you make what you make this little thing.
John:No, it was people actually asking about, you know, why you do this, what this is for, how, you know, oh, I've heard of your product already.
John:Did you see the same thing, Caleb on the show floor walking around?
Caleb:Yes.
Caleb:Yeah.
Caleb:And I saw, you know, there was people that were traveling from far and wide.
Caleb:There was just a very friendly, and it was very accessible.
Caleb:And I also felt like if you had come off the streets and you thought, man, you know, gun owners are nut heads and they're crazy.
Caleb:They're a bunch of white supremacists.
Caleb:I'm gonna go in here and I'm just gonna lay low and I'm just gonna, you know, watch the, watch the geese for a little bit.
Caleb:I think you would have had probably the best impression that the two a community can give, which is, like you said, just great people there.
Caleb:We had awesome presenters.
Caleb:I'm a big fan of John Lovella.
Caleb:I thought it was great that he was there running around.
Caleb:I ran into Isaac from T Rex arms.
Caleb:He's one of my favorite people in the industry because he has so much care and concern to communicate.
Caleb:You would think that he was a lawyer in another life because he takes language so seriously.
Caleb:So I think if you came off the streets and you had a chance to interact with those people or any of the companies that were on hand, that, yeah, you would have got the best impression of the second amendment you can, and you probably won't believe the lies about it after that unless you're really ignorant, so.
John:Well, the funny part is we did have one of the anti gun orgs show up, and the worst thing they said is that there were children's books.
John:I believe it was like they were nitpicking, like, oh, high point had Yeet Cannon, and then it was Yehuda from the Pew, Pew Jew and his children's books on how to get kids into guns and things like that.
John:And that was the worst thing they could come up with.
Caleb:Yeah, it was hilarious.
Caleb:Yeah, that's desperation at that point, I would say, but, you know, I really want everybody to want to get into firearms and I want it to be an appealing thing.
Caleb:So.
Kayleigh:Yeah, it was really fun to put on.
Kayleigh:And we won't stay on the topic of goals too much longer, but it's always very interesting to me from the behind the scenes of putting the show on to, like, actually seeing the show take place.
Kayleigh:And I was not expecting you bring up John Lovell.
Kayleigh:I was not expecting some of the breakout sessions to be as.
Kayleigh:As well attended as they are.
Kayleigh:Like, I don't know that.
Kayleigh:If you would have come to me and said, hey, the home schooling and introduction into the second amendment for kids, that breakout session is going to be standing room only.
Kayleigh:I don't know that I would have believed you.
Kayleigh:I would have thought, no, surely the content creator panel is going to be one of the bigger, the biggest ones.
Kayleigh:And it was.
Kayleigh:But I was shocked by how well attended the stop the bleed trainings were, how well attended the homeschooling panel was.
Kayleigh:The active shooter panel, where we had citizens that had been involved in being that good guy with the gun, sharing their stories.
Kayleigh:Those were standing room only breakout sessions.
Kayleigh:And I just, it blows my mind, the support that the members gave.
Kayleigh:Some of those that I thought would be, I mean, I thought they'd be well attended, but I did not think that it would be, like, wall to wall packed out.
Kayleigh:But it was really cool to see again, people hear me say this all the time, but thinking that the gun owner base is a monolith is incredibly dangerous.
Caleb:Yes.
Kayleigh:And, you know, even.
Kayleigh:Even people who know this, like, I preach this fact and even I, multiple times, was like, all right, you know, we'll have some people attend, but, you know, it's probably not gonna be, you know, one of the biggest draws.
Kayleigh:And I was proven wrong, which just shows you the diversity and the desire to know different things and to offer educational classes that fit people's needs differently, because it's not a monolith, and not everyone goes for one topic and not the other.
John:Yeah, well, and it was funny because when you and I were.
John:And I'm going to move on to something after this, but when you and I were setting up the talks and panels, we're like, oh, yeah, we'll put this person in this room, and this person, this room, and people will choose.
John:And the amount of people who stopped us were like, I wanted to go to both.
John:And that just showed.
John:Like, we thought our thought process was like, okay, well, half the people go here, half the people go there.
John:And the amount of people who were like, I wanted to go both.
John:And if you want to watch any of those or listen to any of those stream, they are up on the forum is up on YouTube, and the main stage is up on rumble.
John:So if you missed those things, go ahead and go do that.
John:Now it's time for the fun segment of the show, or my favorite segment of the show.
Caleb:I thought we were already having fun, so we are having fun.
John:Kaylee's favorite segment of the show.
John:Kaylee, go ahead and step up on that soapbox.
John:And let's go from the soapbox.
Kayleigh:Yeah.
Kayleigh:So from the soapbox, the kind of topic that is a burning, I guess, desire for everyone to know is about the wordsmithing of the left and their recreation of terminology.
Kayleigh:And one, it kind of gets your takes on things like red flag laws, gun confiscation orders, quote unquote, standard capacity magazine, high capacity magazines, and all of the.
Kayleigh:The creations of language that the left has interred upon us.
Caleb:Yeah.
Caleb:You know, it's interesting.
Caleb:My oldest sister in law got married recently.
Caleb:We had a lot of family in town, and not everybody's conservative.
Caleb:And I had a really wonderful conversation with someone that I respect and I love.
Caleb:They're more left leaning.
Caleb:And so they asked me some basic questions, and I was just surprised at the lack of education for something that's opposed.
Caleb:You don't even have to have a basic understanding of firearms, what they do or what they don't do to say that we should get rid of them entirely.
Caleb:And then people have a lot of misconceptions because of these word salads or deceptive language.
Caleb:One of the ones that I hate the most that gets quoted very often is that gun violence is the leading killer of children.
Caleb:And if you look at that study that was conducted with Johns Hopkins University, you know, it includes kids one to 19.
Caleb:A lot of it is gang violence.
Caleb:And it was during the peak of COVID when kids were taken out of school.
Caleb:They didn't have any structure.
Caleb:They started getting on social media and talking a lot of trash.
Caleb:There's no context to the information whatsoever.
Caleb:And yet they keep running around and pushing this fear tactic that somehow guns are the leading killer of kids.
Caleb:People won't talk about how many people die from fentanyl every year.
Caleb:You know, and they.
Caleb:It just.
Caleb:It's incredibly frustrating.
Caleb:Language is very powerful, and if you can change it, you can change how people think or how they perceive reality.
Kayleigh:Yeah.
Kayleigh:And more to that point, it is the anti gunners on the left that primarily control media, and they're the ones that are shaping the narrative in a lot of ways.
Kayleigh:And then we find ourselves using that language that they are giving us.
Kayleigh:And what we fail to realize is every time we do that, every time we.
Kayleigh:We let the methodology go unnoticed when it comes to statistics or when we use things like red flag laws or even things like mass shooting, which puts the emphasis on the fact that it was a shot versus mass murder, which puts it on, like, the human value there, and that somebody was actually murdering people.
Kayleigh:People.
Kayleigh:You know, all of those things, those language devices, they matter, because when you allow the opposing side to be this primary pillar creation for your argument, you're immediately taking what could have been your position of strength, which is the 27 words penned in the Constitution, which is the fact that it is a constitutionally protected right, and you're actually giving up that ground and conceding to them that.
Kayleigh:Sure, we'll play with your terminology, and we will concede these things and then try to fight about, you know, how to best deal with them, versus calling out when the data is incorrect or calling out when the methodology is incorrect, or calling out when the words that they're using is manipulative.
Caleb:Extremely manipulative.
Caleb:Yeah.
Kayleigh:So I think.
Caleb:Sorry, go ahead.
Kayleigh:No, please.
Caleb:I was going to say, a perfect example of that is gun violence archives strongly petitioned the CDC to remove all statistics related to defensive uses of handguns.
Caleb:And they did.
Caleb:They took it down.
Caleb:I don't know if it's gone back up since then, but people, you know, think about how many gun deaths there are every year, and it's almost near what car traffic deaths are.
Caleb:And then you got to remove the statistics of, you know, usually around 60% of that is self inflicted, which is.
Caleb:That doesn't make it okay.
Caleb:But that's sad.
Caleb:You know, it's a terrible way to die, but that.
Caleb:That's not people just having hate against their fellow man and choosing a firearm as a means to kill them.
Caleb:But then you look at the defensive uses of handguns, and it's usually around like 2 million cases a year.
Caleb:Absolutely dwarfs any kind of.
Caleb:I mean, if you want to talk about a utilitarian society, you know, if we're looking for the maximum good, then their focus should be on those cases of defensive uses.
Caleb:Right.
Caleb:But if you control the conversation and you constantly steer it towards.
Caleb:It's kind of like a political opponent going after another one by just throwing empty accusations.
Caleb:Right.
Caleb:If all you focus on is the accusations and you're the opponent of that person and all you do is try, oh, no, I didn't.
Caleb:I didn't have inappropriate sexual relationships.
Caleb:And that's all you end up talking about because you're just trying to respond to just false accusations.
Caleb:Then that person has complete control over the conversation, and then they can go in the background and do whatever they want.
Caleb:I mean, a lot of this stuff is just thrown up on the wall so that the general public is distracted.
Caleb:And then they can go and pass laws that don't represent the will of the people, that don't actually represent public safety and then do ironic things like, you know, send a bunch of weapons to other countries that are not us to commit murder or, you know, whatever you call warfare.
John:Yeah, and we were talking about that yesterday and talking about how they're using our tax dollars against us.
Caleb:Yeah, absolutely.
John:So I'm going to let you sing the praises of that because you two were having a great conversation about that for a while, so go for it.
Caleb:Yeah.
Caleb:So, you know, our conversation we talked about a little bit yesterday.
Caleb:You look at the situation with disaster relief.
Caleb:You know, FEMA basically said they're out of money, and you look at what they've been spending their money on.
Caleb:In the last year, they spent $670 million helping illegal immigrants.
Caleb:And, look, if anybody wants to come to this country and find a better life, I can't fault them for doing that.
Caleb:I think this is the best country that's ever existed in history.
Caleb:But I think, again, if you enter the country illegally as your first act, then you're probably not going to respect the rest of the laws that are meant to maintain order and peace, liberty and justice.
Caleb:For all.
Caleb:So they're out of money.
Caleb:People are applying for $750 in groceries.
Caleb:And now I'm hearing that people are.
Caleb:There's a decent amount of people getting denied for that, too.
Caleb:And then in the same breath, they sent over $100 million to Lebanon.
Caleb:And it's insane to think, you know, we're sending weapons to one country who's using those weapons against another country, and then we're giving humanitarian aid to the country that is being.
Caleb:Those weapons are used against.
Caleb:And yet we don't have any money for our people here at home.
Caleb:And in the same way, our justice system has become the same thing.
Caleb:Right.
Caleb:Whether it's a governor or a senator or a president goes after our constitutional rights or second Amendment rights, they can pass it through.
Caleb:They can work overtime on that.
Caleb:They're getting paid by our tax dollars.
Caleb:But when we want to go back and try to overturn it, and organizations like gun owners of America want to sue the ATF to try to reverse a law that they never had the authority to pass in the first place.
Caleb:It comes from what?
Caleb:It comes from your membership fees.
Caleb:It comes from money that you have to raise grassroots.
Caleb:It's not tax dollars.
Caleb:And so your own money's being used against you, and then you have to pay more money to get your rights back.
Caleb:I think that's just an extreme perversion of justice, and it would make our founding fathers sick.
Kayleigh:And I think more to that is the bureaucracy that has.
Kayleigh:Not only is it we're fighting against our own tax dollars, we're not even voting these people in.
Kayleigh:Like, at least not that it's justified, but at least if it's a governor or a senator doing these things or a president, you.
Kayleigh:You at least can vote them out of office.
Caleb:Right.
Kayleigh:I think even more egregiously is when you have a bloated bureaucracy that is going rogue, deciding, in the case of the.
Kayleigh:The pistol brace bands, that millions of gun owners would be felons overnight and.
Caleb:Wouldn'T even know it.
Kayleigh:Yeah.
Kayleigh:Yeah.
Kayleigh:That's the.
Kayleigh:The mind blowing part is how many people had no idea how close that they were to becoming a felon.
Kayleigh:And we have to fight those.
Kayleigh:And thankfully, Goa members, I always say we have the best membership in the world, and I truly believe it because we're always willing to fight and everyone is willing to donate so that we can continue these lawsuits and continue the fight in the courts and in Congress and at the state and local level.
Kayleigh:But ultimately, we're a fighting machine from grassroots activism.
Kayleigh:Yeah, but it's so much harder to fight these injustices when they're coming from a bureaucracy that believes that they can do whatever they want whenever they want and have free political reign to do so while having none of the accountability measures that someone who is elected has.
Caleb:Yeah, well, and how often do you see, like, a law get passed that didn't need approval by Congress, but to reverse that law, they need approval by Congress?
Caleb:I'm like, isn't that backwards?
Caleb:Shouldn't that be the other way around?
Caleb:But it seems more and more like the system is working against the people.
Caleb:It's being weaponized against political opponents.
Caleb:You see people who get off scot free for doing terrible things.
Caleb:I was really interested to see how they were going to handle the weapon charges against Hunter Biden because I'm a second amendment absolutionist.
Caleb:And I was like, I think that he should be able to possess a firearm.
Caleb:And, you know, his, he, you know, if he lies on a background check, yeah, that's dumb.
Caleb:But I wanted to see him have the best justice possible.
Caleb:And I saw there were multiple legal organizations like gun owners of America that offered him legal counsel.
Caleb:They're like, hey, we'll represent you in court because even though, you know, you hate our guts, we want to represent you and we want your gun rights to be preserved.
Caleb:And of course, all those offers were declined upon.
Caleb:So.
Kayleigh:Yeah, because you've got, in the case of someone like that, you've got a system that needs to be fixed.
Kayleigh:But by that same token, you also have a political class who believes that the rules don't apply to them and only should apply to everyday citizens.
Kayleigh:And so, you know, it's very frustrating, I think, to everyday gun owners, everyday Americans, when they see the rules for the but not for me mentality of the political elite.
Caleb:I think that can be summed up with, you know, Kamala Harris was on Oprah for a staged appearance.
Caleb:And near the end of it, she made the comment that if somebody came into her house that she would shoot them and then laughed about it.
Caleb:And I thought, what a, you know, here you are.
Caleb:You've built your whole identity on, you know, banning assault weapons.
Caleb:And, you know, when you look at the definitions or the language related to assault weapons, you know, semi automatic, high capacity magazine, it's not limited to rifles.
Caleb:I mean, they use the air 15 as opposed to poster child.
Caleb:But this kind of language would quickly overlap and bleed into things like even handguns because, you know, you look at Chicago demonizing Glock switches and trying to get Glock to recall every Glock ever made, which is insane.
Caleb:Chicago doesn't have a Glock switch problem.
Caleb:Chicago has a Chicago problem, and they're not trying to fix it.
Caleb:So when you hear someone like Kamala, you know, laughing about, yeah, I'd shoot.
Caleb:I'd shoot somebody and kill them if they came into my house.
Caleb:It really, to me, that was the embodiment of, you know, rules for thee, but not for me.
Caleb:I thought it was.
Caleb:I thought it was disgusting, honestly.
John:Well, it's funny.
John:The AR 15 has become this poster child for assault weapons ban.
John:But if you look at, you show somebody a mini 14, they're like, oh, no, no, that's fine wood furniture.
Caleb:Yeah, it's a hunting rifle.
John:Yeah, yeah, it's insane.
John:And we're touching on the topic of taxation and constitutional rights.
John:And one of the cases that was not too long ago that won in the Supreme Court was the Minneapolis Star case, where they were taxing them on paper and ink because they didn't like what they were saying.
John:And that could set a really big precedent for the second amendment because they got ruled in their favor that you can't tax a constitutionally given right.
John:So what do you think on that?
Caleb:I think that absolutely makes sense, because if you look at the second amendment, a lot of people miss out on, for instance, well regulated right.
Caleb:And I've heard so many people say, well regulated means well regulated by.
Caleb:Well regulated by the government.
Caleb:No, that would be completely counterintuitive.
Caleb:This is to keep the government in check.
Caleb:So what does a well regulated militia look like?
Caleb:That means that you have people training, you're capable, you're ready to roll.
Caleb:You have communication established.
Caleb:There's a sense of order.
Caleb:It's not just someone buying an AR 15, sticking it in the closet, and then sitting on their hands and being like, well, they ever come for me, I'm gonna get them good.
Caleb:So I think for the necessity of that, that means being, having ammunition, that means having firearms, that means having body armor.
Caleb:And all of those things cost money.
Caleb:So if you put a tax on those things, you're directly preventing or attempting to slow people's ability to obtain those items.
Caleb:The NFA is the same way.
Caleb:Right.
Caleb: When it was passed in: Caleb:That is the only good thing about inflation, is that $200 seems like nothing.
Caleb:Now.
Caleb:I still think it's ridiculous, and it should absolutely get rid of the NFA, but those are costs of entry that were designed to be prohibitive of people getting access to things that should be otherwise protected by their constitutional rights.
Kayleigh:Absolutely.
Kayleigh:And we've seen this.
Kayleigh:A right delayed is a right denied.
Caleb:Absolutely.
Kayleigh:You know, it's obviously made famous through Martin Luther King Junior, and the fact that he was denied and delayed multiple times in getting that concealed carry permit, which ultimately not having the ability to protect himself caused him to lose his life.
Kayleigh:And no one wants to touch those kind of hard subjects, but those are the kind of subjects that we have to broach, because whether it is a tax stamp and you're waiting for, you know, a suppressor or whether it is, you know, during COVID you know, when you were just joining the firearms industry, you know, we were having to fight and sue in Pennsylvania.
Kayleigh:I know for sure was one of them.
Kayleigh:I think Virginia as well, where counties were just not issuing permits.
Caleb:Yeah.
Caleb:Just like a full service.
Kayleigh:Under the guise.
Kayleigh:Yeah, under the guise of.
Kayleigh:Oh, well, you know, we're public safety.
Kayleigh:We're in a public health crisis, and we had to sue on the premise of a right delayed as a right denied because you had rampant crime in many areas.
Kayleigh:You had many people needing and wanting a way to protect themselves.
Kayleigh:And the government was saying, no, actually, you don't need.
Kayleigh:You don't need that.
Caleb:It was all about control.
Caleb:Just a further measure of control.
Kayleigh:Exactly.
Kayleigh:And so it's so important that when we discuss these topics and we discuss the taxation of a constitutional right, we don't just look at the blatant overreach by the government in our second Amendment right.
Kayleigh:That's not how I want to word this, but you have to look at more than just the cost of the tax stamp.
Kayleigh:You also have to look at the waitlist that, that has created all of the additional hoops that gun owners have to go through for a constitutionally protected right.
Kayleigh:It isn't, the monetary side is one thing, and I'm not saying that it's a good thing, but it is just the tip of the iceberg on the harm that has been able to be caused to the second amendment for all of these years.
Caleb:Yeah, well, and then you see just a.
Caleb:Oh, go ahead.
Caleb:Go ahead, John.
John:No, you could go for it, I.
Caleb:Was going to say.
Caleb:And then you see those systems that, you know, are the, you know, designed for public safety.
Caleb:You know, they're not meant to be gun registries.
Caleb:They're not meant to be giant databases of who has what.
Caleb:And yet there's, you know, footage of people from the ATF going into the back of gun stores and taking pictures of their logs of, you know, who bought what, which is, you know, blatantly illegal.
Caleb:You look at Department of Homeland Security was formed entirely on the basis of spying on Americans.
Caleb:And Mayorkas has constantly overstepped his bounds.
Caleb:They bring him in all the time.
Caleb:Talk about an unelected official that has zero interest in helping Americans and has zero oversight, because it seems like every time you see him, they're like, hey, you're really not supposed to do this or spy on people in this way.
Caleb:Oh, I didn't know that.
Caleb:You know what excuse?
Caleb:I didn't know that doesn't even work in my kids, because my kids, even though they're five and six, they don't get to use the excuse.
Caleb:I didn't know I couldn't do that.
Caleb:Because they are independent thinkers.
Caleb:I expect them to use their moral compass and to use their limited time on this earth to be able to determine whether something is right or wrong.
Caleb:And so I would expect someone like Mayorkas, who's been in this business for a while now, to be able to know whether or not spying on Americans and buying information from Google to spy in Americans is a good use of our tax dollars.
Kayleigh:Yeah.
Kayleigh:And, you know, it wasn't very long ago that Goa and GoF, our sister organization, through the Freedom of Information act, uncovered that the ATF was illegally keeping billions of out of business records.
Kayleigh:And, you know, they're not.
Kayleigh:Those are supposed to be destroyed after a certain, certain number of time.
Kayleigh:But through the Freedom of Information act, we were able to uncover that that wasn't actually happening.
Kayleigh:And, you know, those things are very important for us as gun owners, us as citizens to know.
Kayleigh:And that's why the work that, you know, Goa and Gof, I find very important.
Kayleigh:And it's one of the reasons why I enjoy coming to work every day, is because I know that we're doing the right thing.
Kayleigh:And you can't.
Kayleigh:If sunlight is the best disinfectant, you have to have the resources and the manpower to find what needs to be exposed to the light.
Kayleigh:And thankfully, Freedom Information acts still work, and we're still able to uncover those things.
Kayleigh:But it's not a good thing to uncover.
Caleb:Yeah, well, there's a famous quote, and I can't remember who said it, but it's that the government should know nothing about you and you should know everything about them.
Caleb:And yet it's the other way around.
Caleb:Right?
Caleb:Our government is veiled in secrecy.
Caleb:People think that people that are pro big government.
Caleb:Yes, daddy, take my rights away.
Caleb:They fawn over politicians and treat them like celebrities, when, in fact, they're supposed to be public servants.
Caleb:They're not supposed to be making millions and millions of dollars.
Caleb:And we should know everything that they're doing while they're at their job, and we should know a bit about what they do in their personal life, because if someone is participating in illegal activities, if they're harming children, if they're going against the very laws that they impose, like mask laws during COVID I want them out of office because they can't be trusted.
Caleb:And yet we have launched all of these taxpayer funded campaigns to gather as much information about the american people and give it to organizations, three letter organizations that they can use against us.
Caleb:And then you end up with things like, Catholics are on the FBI watch list because they're intolerant towards transgender people, which is just insane.
Caleb:I think when you talk about perversion of justice, you talk about what this country was founded on, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that if you don't get liberty, you'd rather have death.
Caleb:We've just become this people that's very comfortable with not having liberty, and we're just really, really, really scared of death.
Caleb:Maybe that's just because, as a society, we've moved away from a belief in God or that there's anything after this life.
Caleb:And so it's just.
Caleb:It's just yolo, you know, I gotta.
Caleb:I gotta preserve whatever I have now as much comfort and, you know, buying crap I don't need as I possibly can to fill the hole.
John:Yeah, I mean, that's well said.
John:You know, we talked about constitutional given rights, and if I don't mention this, Alexey might come after me.
John:West Virginia has no tax on firearms and ammunition because it's a constitutionally protected right.
John:How do we get that for every state?
John:How do we grow that.
John:That push?
Kayleigh:And that's like, to note that Tennessee got rid of their privilege tax due.
John:Did they?
Caleb:Well, hey, are we gonna get.
Caleb:Are we gonna get refunded on those taxes?
Kayleigh:I wish.
Caleb:I want to back tax on that.
John:You know, and we brought.
John:We bring up this perversion of power, too.
John:And, you know, I'm a history nerd.
John:And, you know, my plane trip last week was just watching a three part documentary on George Washington, which just tells you how much fun I had on the plane.
John:It was fantastic, by the way.
John:But even if you look back in our history, the founding fathers were not dumb, especially George.
John:And a lot of people give him a lot of hate.
John:But he said most, if you look back at history, most revolutions fall back into some sort of monarchy or dictatorship because there's somebody who rises to power, they take the power, they go, he didn't even want to serve as president.
John:No, the man did not want to be, but he knew that he had to.
John:And then he tried to make him.
John:Yeah, they tried to make him king.
John:And he went two terms and was like, I'm done.
John:I'm gonna go live my life out.
John:Cause that's what I wanna do.
John:Because I've served this country from the time he arrived, you know, from the french and indian war into the revolution into his presidency, the poor man didn't even get to enjoy his retirement.
John:He was like, what, six months or a year later he passed away.
Kayleigh:Yeah, well, I think you're hitting at a broader point.
Kayleigh:We used to have a political class that understood that they are civil servants and that they are employed by the american people.
Kayleigh:And now we have a political class that is self servant in many cases.
Kayleigh:And they consider themselves to be a leader.
Kayleigh:They're not looking to their constituency to tell them what direction that they should be going.
Kayleigh:They're not looking to their constituency for advice on what is going to make your life better because they have decided that they know everything.
Kayleigh:And that is, I think, a really difficult thing for us as citizens to understand is it is our job to hold them accountable.
Kayleigh:And that means making phone calls, that means sending emails, that means showing up to gold lobby days or to town halls.
Kayleigh:You know, it's, you know, right when we're filming this podcast, it is right before the election.
Caleb:Yeah.
Caleb:Early election or early voting starts in my town, I think tomorrow.
Kayleigh:Yeah.
Kayleigh:And so it's so important that when the political class is out there and they're doing all of their campaign stops, that you show up, and not to be disrespectful, but to engage with them and say, hey, we've got some serious issues with how you're treating the constitution.
Kayleigh:Hey, we need to be looking at, you know, getting suppressors out of the NFA.
Kayleigh:We need to be looking at completely abolishing the NFA.
Kayleigh:We need to be looking at these proactive approaches to restore our rights.
Kayleigh:And then if we have to be on the defensive on what they need to do to protect our rights as well.
Kayleigh:But if we don't hold them accountable throughout the year, we can't just expect that they're going to magically wake up after another election and be like, you know what?
Kayleigh:I think I need to start doing the right thing.
Kayleigh:They're only going to know that when we let them know and we show them that, hey, no, your power really does come from us.
Kayleigh:And if you don't do the right things, I'm not voting for you, and you will lose power.
Kayleigh:And because that's really fundamentally the only thing that a politician cares about is are they going to remain in power, stay in power.
Kayleigh:And that's kind of the whole philosophy of Goa, is empowering the grassroots, giving the tools that you need to be successful.
Kayleigh:It's why we have a phenomenal legal team and a phenomenal state and local affairs and federal affairs who read the bills, who break it down, who send you the digestible version, takes 30 seconds to send an email.
Kayleigh:If you're a slow typer, maybe a minute and a half to your representative and say, hey, you know, this is what we, what we're expecting of you.
Kayleigh:And if you have the time to make a five minute phone call, even better.
Kayleigh:And if you have even more time and you can go to a town hall, even better.
Kayleigh:But you have to do something because if we do nothing, then they're going to continue to walk all over our rights because we're not telling them how to vote.
Caleb:Yeah, I mean, I think that shows just how important communication is if you, you know, I've been doing some work recently with groups like Trigger Hill, which is an app that's launching soon for Second Amendment freedom of speech.
Caleb:Because you look at YouTube, you know, they keep constantly restricting information.
Caleb:And if you want to, if you want to learn about gun rights, if you want to learn about what you can do to mobilize an effort to maintain our gun rights, that's not content that gets recommended unless you're really on there a lot.
Caleb:And you know, they could, I think what really looms over us is that they could pull the plug at any minute and then there would go the majority of our education.
Caleb:You know, it's like knowing something bad is going to happen and you just hope it's not going to be tomorrow.
Caleb:But I think people are very satiated today.
Caleb:People are very comfortable, there's a lot of entertainment available and pornography is free.
Caleb:And you know, that's part of the marxist movement is just to keep people satiated.
Caleb:And then they won't care or notice when their rights are being taken away.
John:Well said.
John:Well, we gotta wrap this up.
John:I appreciate you, Caleb, for being on, so go ahead.
John:And if you could shout out all your socials where people can find you.
Caleb:Yeah, so you can find me at twelve.
Caleb:Spies on YouTube.
Caleb:On Instagram.
Caleb:I'm one, two underscore spies.
Caleb:And I would just say I'm always gonna make a strong advocacy for homeschooling.
Caleb:The best way that you can impart and your beliefs on the next generation is to have a bunch of kids and teach them the way that they should go.
Caleb:Our birth rate in the United States is under two, which means each household is producing less offspring than what they started with.
Caleb:So the people that are going to take control, the people that are going to have the dominant belief system, are the ones that have a lot of kids and educate them themselves.
Caleb:And I would also just say, as a country, we need to go back to having a Christ centered belief system.
Caleb:A lot of our justice system is founded on the Ten Commandments.
Caleb:And if we lose sight of what rights were given to us by God and not by government, I think that's the greatest thing the government tries to do, is they try to convince you that they're God.
Caleb:I think that the second amendment is a gateway to distrust in the government.
Caleb:And if you distrust the government and you don't believe that they have your best interest, then you're going to start taking personal responsibility for your safety, for educating your.
Caleb:Your kids, for providing for yourself instead of taking a handout.
Caleb:So I don't think there's any bigger fight that we can participate in right now than for the Second Amendment.
John:Very well said.
John:Well, guys, thank you for listening today.
John:Make sure to go check Caleb out.
John:Twelve spies.
John:And have a great rest of your day.
Caleb:Thanks, guys.
