Latest / None of Your Business Podcast / Guns N' Legal Roses: Navigating Gun Laws and Safety with Peter Tilem

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Guns N' Legal Roses: Navigating Gun Laws and Safety with Peter Tilem · None of Your Business Podcast

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So they ran out quickly and he ran after them and he took out
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his gun and he said give me my stuff back and get out of here.
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They gave the stuff back. They got out of there.
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But you know where they went to the police station, the police
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station, and they filed a report and this man was arrested.
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None of your business. Oshi, none of your business,
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Michael. It's the None of Your Business
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podcast hosted by Michael Anoshi.
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Welcome back everybody to another amazing episode of the
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None of Your Business Podcast. Please don't forget to like,
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comment, subscribe. And a big thank you to the Prime
0:38
Source team for being behind this amazing journey of ours.
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Peter, first welcome to our show.
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Thank you. Thank you.
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I'm very happy. To be here, it's such an honor
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to have you and I. And like she said, we feel safer
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having you in the room. And to be honest, this is the
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hottest topic now that is in synagogues, in places of
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prayers. And even when you go to a
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museum, you look around and you're like, is anybody carrying
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here? Is anybody here to protect me?
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In a school especially, I mean, you turn on the news any morning
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and you'll hear about an unfortunate incident that
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happens in a school and going to pray in synagogue.
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Honestly, today's day and age, especially since October 7th,
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I'm personally nervous now. I was, I always tell my friends
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I misplaced my Earpods on a daily basis.
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So I'm not sure if I'm a good candidate for a weapon, but
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you'll have to tell me if you think I am or not.
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But my history with guns is my nerf guns.
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I had ABB gun when I was 14 years old.
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Because back then you were able to order anything from a
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catalog, right? Do you remember those?
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You you got your catalog? I forget the names of them, but
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you could order ninja stars and butterfly knives and nunchucks
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and BB guns. I had them all under my
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mattress. Took a long time to get though,
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but he said I send a check to get it.
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That's true that a money order. A money order, correct?
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Yes, yes, remember those. So I have to tell you, I'm
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excited for you to be here. Welcome again to our show.
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We are on the None of your Business podcast.
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Please everybody remember to like, comment and subscribe.
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We are over bar Mitzvah, by the way, because we've passed our
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13th episode. And thank you, thank you.
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So you're a part of that journey for us and with us.
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And like I said, this is a hot topic.
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My friends that are all around me started carrying and I'll
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I'll I'll move it to you Ashi, in your experience and what
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you're hearing, but I will leave you with this.
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The one thing that my friends tell me that go through the
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course, and especially the ones that have learnt from you on the
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legalities of carrying a weapon and the severity of the
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liability of having a weapon on you, is that if they're praying
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in a synagogue and God forbid something happens where someone
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comes in with a weapon and, you know, starts just drawing out
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his weapon and everybody's scared.
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You know what my friends who took Peter's class tell me?
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They say the first person we shoot is Ellie and Ari and
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Yussie, who didn't take a class, who don't know what they're
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doing, who are likely to kill others, and then we go after the
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terrorists. Have you heard that before?
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I have heard that. I have heard that.
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Look, there's been a sea change over the last.
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I mean, this is generational change, but in the last five
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years, certainly since the pandemic, people's attitudes
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towards guns has changed. And especially in our
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communities in the Northeast where guns were not so accepted
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beforehand, they've more widespread, more accepting of
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people with guns. And now certainly normal people,
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everyday people are applying for gun licenses at at unbelievable
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rates. Yeah.
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Well, Peter, I'm one of those guys.
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OK, OK. And I think you're right.
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The landscape has completely tilted in the last three to five
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years. You know, 10 years ago, somebody
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who had a gun in their house, it was an anomaly.
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So what do you need a gun for? What are you doing?
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It's dangerous. But now today, it's almost like
3:56
a necessity. It's almost the opposite.
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You don't have a gun in your house like you do.
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You know what's going on in the world today and especially since
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October seven, That's what really, really just gave me the
4:07
indication it's time. It's time.
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You know, you can't sit here and rely on the government relying
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to the local police force. It's great shore, but every
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person wants to protect their family.
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And at that moment, it hit home for me.
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And I said it's time I got to do something about it.
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So I went and I applied and I started taking the courses.
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And I'm happy to say that eight months later, I now have a
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concealed carry permit. I have not yet purchased my own
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gun, which I'm going to hope that you're going to help me
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out, Peter, to decide what's a good fit for me, you know, but I
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haven't yet done that. But I got my card.
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I have my permit. So I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a
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step ahead and a lot of people in my community as well have
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also taken upon themselves to get their permits.
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And you're right, more people in the synagogues carry makes
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everybody feel safer. And I think that this has really
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become a very hot topic and this has really been brought to the
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forefront because of what's going on in the world.
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When I met my wife and I came from Brooklyn with a handgun,
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and her response was, what are people going to say if they find
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out that you have a gun? I don't want a gun in our house.
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You know, people will be shunned.
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People won't let their kids play in our house.
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And that was the stigma in the Northeast.
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And so yes, I think that the that that COVID was a big
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breaking point, right? People looked at the situation
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and said, I didn't know basic government services could just
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shut down in the 21st century in the Northeast, right?
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How could that been? And so that's one thing.
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And I was in Israel in January and I visited a lot of these
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communities that were, that were targeted, that were victimized
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by Hamas. And I spoke to people who didn't
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have guns in the house, who survived.
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And they, one guy told us he called the police, he picked up
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the phone, the lines were down and there was no one.
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There was no help. And so people are starting to
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understand that you are your own first responder.
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You have no choice. And that all happened at the
6:05
same time that the Supreme Court reminded us in 2022, in June of
6:10
2022, in the Bruin decision, that not only are you your own
6:14
first responder, but you have a constitutional right to be your
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own first responder 'cause the Supreme Court told us that not
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only do you have a right to have a gun, you have a right to carry
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that gun outside the home. And that that right is not for
6:27
hunting or some, some sporting purpose, but to defend yourself
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for, for self-defense. And so that was a really
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landmark decision that really opened up gun ownership and and
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and gun possession to a broader range of people than it ever had
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that opportunity before. So you believe that's very well
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articulated, by the way, You believe that every single
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citizen, every common person, the average person should have a
6:55
gun lying around their house to protect their family.
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I think our country was founded on that principle.
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And if you look at our country in particular, right, nobody
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Native Americans who were here before we got here, but no one
7:10
else was born here, right? All of us are from people that
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took great journeys across great oceans to or walk great
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distances to come to this country.
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We are a selection of the most adventurous, the bravest, the
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the most fearless. And so this is what America is
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about. And this is this is our
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American. We are the people that didn't
7:36
stay behind. We are the people that want to
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take the chance, leave everything behind and and travel
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across the world. And so our country was kind of
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founded on this principle. Our founding fathers broke away
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from a totalitarian government. And, and the way I say this to
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people, and I, the way I say this to judges is our founding
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fathers, in their infinite wisdom, did not give us the
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constitutional right to possess anything other than one item.
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We don't have the constitutional right to housing.
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We don't have a constitutional right to medicine, medical care,
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to abortions, to not to get, not to get political, to wine, to
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basic necessity, to close. The only constitutional right
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guaranteed, the only item guaranteed under the first,
8:26
under the constitution of this country is the right to bear
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arms. And why is that?
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Because once you have that, then you can maintain your basic
8:35
freedoms. Then you can get the other
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things you need. You can get food, you can get
8:41
shelter, but without that, everything can be taken away
8:44
from you. And for our founding fathers to
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have the foresight 250 years ago to say, you know what, there's
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nothing else. This is the only thing.
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We're not worried about you having clothing.
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We're not worried about you having water or food, but the
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right to defend yourself, the right to the item that is most
9:04
necessary to protect yourself, that you have a right to have.
9:07
Wow, I have to tell you guys, both of you, that over a decade
9:10
ago I bought myself a shotgun and that's easy.
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And it's just an interesting phenomenon that you can go to a
9:17
Walmart and buy a shotgun. I didn't go to Walmart.
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I went to another store, but I got a shotgun to have a
9:23
protection in my home. I didn't wait for concealed
9:25
carry to get easier to get. I didn't wait for a situation
9:29
like October 7th to wake me up. I always wanted to have a
9:31
protection in my home. I I grew up in Brooklyn, by the
9:35
way, with a guard dog. We had a trained German Shepherd
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and we needed that German Shepherd to protect our home.
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What neighborhood in Brooklyn on Ave.
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I and East 3rd? My old stomping grounds.
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There we go. So you know that we we used to
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wake up in the morning to burning cars.
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OK, I used to travel around to school with brass knuckles, Mace
9:55
and a butterfly knife in my pocket just to feel confident to
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make it to the school bus, right?
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That's the environment that I lived in.
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So as soon as I had a house on my own, I said I need to have
10:05
some sort of protection and brass knuckles is not going to
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cut it. So I went out and I got a
10:09
shotgun. But what makes it interesting
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is, well, first of all, I have to tell you a quick story.
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When I went to get the shotgun, I asked the guy behind the
10:15
counter. I said, what kind of shotgun do
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you recommend? He said the one that makes the
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loudest sound when you cock it. That's the one that scares them
10:25
off the most. Yeah, exactly.
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And that's the one that I got. I got the loudest that you can
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find. And, and you know, God forbid I
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should never have to use it, but it makes a loud noise loud
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enough that an intruder would be aware that someone is carrying
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something. I'm curious though, what, what
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are your thoughts about that? Like, why do I have to have a
10:43
concealed carry if you're probably going to end up
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convincing me not to carry it a lot because it's so difficult,
10:50
which we'll get into later. But rather than just let
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everybody know today before you get a concealed carry, go out
10:57
and get a shotgun and protect your family.
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Well, that's a no brainer. Oh, OK, so you're agreeing with?
11:03
I'm agreeing with you, a no brainer.
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Everyone should have something. There's there's no brainer that
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you're going to have some protection in your house, OK?
11:10
You have an obligation to yourself.
11:13
You have an obligation to your family, and you have an
11:15
obligation to your neighbors. And my gun makes everyone safer
11:19
around me. And I feel very strongly about
11:21
that. And look, there were times where
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I don't carry for whatever reason.
11:25
Maybe I want to have a drink with dinner, maybe I have,
11:29
maybe, you know, I want to be comfortable.
11:31
I, I don't want to have to wear a cover garment, whatever the
11:34
situation is. But on those occasions, I do
11:38
have a certain amount of guilt that, OK, I'm not fulfilling my
11:44
responsibility, but hopefully there are other people that are
11:46
fulfilling their responsibility and keeping me safer when I'm,
11:50
let's say, falling down on the job.
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Interesting. So it's on your mind, You know
11:54
that it's on your. Mind, it's on my mind.
11:56
And so listen, when you have a gun on you, right, you have a
11:59
different attitude. Maybe you're not going to get
12:03
into it on the road with someone over traffic dispute.
12:07
As a child, I have to tell you, growing up in Brooklyn, I felt
12:10
safe not only because we had a German shepherd that was
12:13
trained, his name was Popeye, by the way, but I also had a dad
12:17
that carried OK, and he carried every day.
12:19
He was an Israeli and he was in the Israeli army.
12:22
To him, it was second nature. But he had a really cool like,
12:25
you know, the vest, you know, they had the, the gun holster on
12:28
the side. Chester holster.
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Exactly. And I'll never forget it was
12:33
2:00 in the morning and Popeye was barking.
12:36
And we knew that if he's barking at 2:00 in the morning, if
12:39
something is happening And we came to the window and we saw
12:42
two men trying to break into our house.
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And he, you know, Popeye got them to, he scared them off, but
12:49
my dad didn't want them to ever come back.
12:51
So he went out on the street in his velour pajamas.
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Never. Forget it.
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I was a young child and he took out his gun and he made them
12:59
aware that we are a caring family.
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And I have to tell you, I felt comfortable my entire life
13:05
growing up knowing that I'm in a very bad neighborhood, but I
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feel safe. So thank you, ABBA.
13:11
Yeah, I, I have to tell you, Michael and Peter, it's very
13:14
sad. It saddens me that it's come to
13:16
this and we're now in a position where, yeah, we, it's the the
13:20
right thing to do is to have some type of weapon in your
13:23
house to fend off some of those people that potentially want to
13:26
do you harm. You know, I grew up in a very
13:29
small community. Everybody knew everybody.
13:32
Nobody locked their doors at night.
13:34
When you parked your car, you didn't bother if your key was in
13:37
your pocket or not. You left it there.
13:39
You left the car running sometimes.
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Like, that's that's how I grew up.
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And a lot of people grow up that way.
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And it's a very naive way to think that this is how it is
13:48
everywhere. Obviously there are certain
13:50
parts that are more dangerous than others, but how did it come
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to this? How did it get to be where no
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matter where you go, you're not safe anymore?
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You're not safe anywhere. Wherever you go, you have to
14:01
look over your shoulder. And is this the new normal?
14:05
Is this how it's going to be forever?
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Are we ever going to get to a point where we can just start
14:09
trusting each other again? So I think I have a broadview on
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this because I've been involved in the criminal justice system
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for 33 years. OK, so.
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Tell us about your background. OK, so my background is a kid
14:23
from Brooklyn, NY City Public Schools.
14:26
And ultimately I went to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh
14:31
for college, came back to New York for law school.
14:34
And after law school, I was very privileged to have what I think
14:39
was the best job in the world. I was appointed as an assistant
14:42
District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney's
14:45
office in Manhattan, and it was literally the best job in the
14:48
world. And I got there in 1991, which
14:51
was really the height of the crack epidemic of the 1990s.
14:56
Probably we hit the high watermark on homicides right
14:59
around that point citywide, maybe around 89 or 90.
15:03
But I was, I was close to the peak.
15:05
And so I came to New York. I came to to be a prosecutor.
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First of all, I grew up in New York.
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I grew up in Brooklyn. I took the subway to school,
15:14
took three subways to high school.
15:15
You hear it in your accent. Very, very discernible.
15:17
Yes, yes it is. And I, I took three subways to
15:22
school and I saw the scourge of crime in New York.
15:25
So I felt very excited about being part of the solution.
15:28
And something great happened because right after I got there,
15:32
Giuliani became the president, became the mayor, the mayor.
15:35
And when Giuliani became the mayor, law enforcement really
15:39
changed in a in a tremendous way because we went from being
15:43
reactive and really feeling that we couldn't affect crime to
15:48
understanding that we were in control.
15:51
And during the the 10 years I was a prosecutor and I graduated
15:55
from handling the most mundane crimes, the most minor crime to
16:01
handling homicides, the most serious crimes.
16:03
And I was part of the gun trafficking unit in the
16:05
Manhattan DA's office where we would buy guns undercover in the
16:08
street and trace them and, and try to understand how guns were
16:13
illegal. Guns were flown into New York
16:18
and we really made a difference. And over the time I was a
16:21
prosecutor over those 10 years, crime and homicide to violent
16:25
crime and even the most minor crimes went down.
16:27
And we went from a situation where homeless people on the
16:31
street and, and the, the window washers would come out to a, to
16:36
a place where that didn't exist. And then the pendulum slung the
16:41
other way. And here we are today.
16:44
But, you know, remember we're talking about, you know, and I
16:47
suspect that not only are you younger than we are, you also
16:52
grew up in a different environment geographically, but
16:55
you're younger than I that then we are.
16:57
So I suspect that you grew up maybe during more of the time
17:01
when law enforcement was having a positive effect.
17:03
And we grew up before, you know, I, I grew up in Brooklyn in the
17:07
70s when, you know, it was chaotic and police had lost all
17:12
control and there was no hope of it.
17:14
They, they thought there was no hope of ever gaining control.
17:17
Now, look, the formula's very simple.
17:19
The formula's very simple. A small percentage of people are
17:22
committing a very large percentage of the crimes.
17:25
If you throw those people in prison, the crimes go down.
17:28
They're not out there committing crimes.
17:31
Do we have the stomach to do that anymore?
17:32
I'm not sure we did. It got to a point where we said
17:36
this is the only option, but at some point it'll get bad again
17:41
and we're going to say that the only option is to start throwing
17:43
criminals in prison. I think what?
17:45
You're saying is it's much better than it used to be.
17:47
I mean at least that in terms of a city living you.
17:49
Know it is, it is much better, but it's but it's on the
17:52
backslide again. And and I'm and you know, you
17:56
mentioned you're sad. I'm sad, and I'm sad because I
17:59
watched the progress we made slipping away because we're now
18:03
become so liberal or woke, whatever the language is, that
18:08
we can't do what we need to do to protect.
18:10
People and we're watching it slip back to a time that it was
18:13
in the 70s and. 80s and I find. Very nerve wracking.
18:16
I find that's it. Yeah, yeah, there's there's
18:18
nothing worse than hearing on the news about some individual
18:22
that committed some heinous crime.
18:23
He killed someone, stole from someone, whatever they did.
18:27
And then you find out that this person was actually incarcerated
18:30
in the past, was let go under some technicality and there's
18:35
some bail reform rule and they let him go and here he is, you
18:39
know, a, a, a repeat offender did it a second time.
18:42
Then you find out sometimes that he was actually in jail 3 or 4
18:45
times and he's at, at what point are are we going to actually
18:49
take control here and say enough is enough that somebody have to
18:52
get killed until we actually open their eyes say, you know
18:54
what, this person should not be on the streets roaming freely.
18:57
They should actually be in jail. Like like it seems like the
19:00
system is almost working against us.
19:03
It's supposed to be there to protect us.
19:05
But it seems like not only they're not protecting us, but
19:08
they're actually trying to figure out ways how they can
19:11
increase the crime, how they can let more people in the streets
19:14
that clearly don't belong in the streets.
19:17
And we could talk about maybe there are other routes, whether
19:19
it's, you know, mental health, you know, and helping them, you
19:21
know, institutionalizing them, giving them, you know, the
19:24
therapies that they need to talk about that.
19:26
But let's, let's face it, bulk of what these people are is
19:29
they're just bad actors and they need to, there needs to be
19:32
consequences. Every child knows this.
19:34
Without consequences, everybody does whatever they want.
19:37
It becomes anarchy, it becomes chaos.
19:39
What is it about the state of New York?
19:42
And I, I'm not a professional, I'm not a a legal expert here,
19:45
but I know enough to know that in New York we're sort of
19:48
spearheading this, maybe some other states as well.
19:51
But in New York, this is a giant problem.
19:53
Why is it such a problem here more than it is anywhere else?
19:56
It's a great question. I I don't know that I have an
19:58
easy answer, especially because New York City became really the
20:04
safest large city in the country.
20:06
And we, we know how to do it. So it's very hard to explain why
20:10
we would allow ourselves to start moving back in the
20:14
direction that we fought so hard to get out of.
20:17
It doesn't make any sense to me. What was one of the things
20:19
Giuliani did? It was one of those notable
20:22
things that he did that you saw really made an impact.
20:24
OK, so one thing that I found incredible and I had the
20:27
privilege of being, and you may have heard this term Compstat
20:30
meeting. No, Compstat meeting is a
20:32
meeting where 3 or 4 precinct commanders would be called into
20:37
a room once a month and they would basically be asked by the
20:42
chief about crime in their community.
20:46
They would want to know. The chief would want to know,
20:48
OK, you had three burglaries this month.
20:53
Have you solved it? Why not?
20:56
If you haven't solved it, what are you doing to solve it?
20:58
And there was accountability. And in that room at the same
21:03
time was the guy who's in charge of the narcotics division for
21:06
that area and the guy who's in charge of parole for that area.
21:09
And so the chief might say it's a parole.
21:12
Let me ask you something. Did you parole any burglars to
21:15
this community in the last month or two that we should be looking
21:18
at? Is that a possibility?
21:20
And there would be someone taking notes and a month later
21:24
when they came back, there would be real progress or people would
21:29
lose their jobs. And it was real accountability.
21:32
Like, like a corporation, like, you know, not like a government.
21:35
Like this is the way that government should be run.
21:38
It was really an incredible idea and it worked.
21:43
It worked in an incredible way. You want to get like a business,
21:45
Like a business, you know, somebody doesn't do their job,
21:48
they get fired. And by people having that
21:50
hangover, their head that if I don't do my job, I'm going to
21:52
get fired. It lights a fire under
21:54
everybody's butts and everybody actually does better, I feel.
21:58
Like in New York today, you feel like if you don't do your job
22:00
properly, you can sue. Not that you get promoted, you
22:04
get promoted, you get promoted like.
22:06
Whole new world and of course we're in healthcare every day.
22:08
We call the stand up meetings, you have, stand up meetings you
22:11
have, clinical you have. Operations.
22:13
Every facility. Everybody's there.
22:14
How are the meals doing? How are the people treat being
22:16
treated and everyone's? And each department, Every
22:19
department sitting on a round table.
22:21
AB CS of running an operation. Sharing information, I think.
22:23
What's not? Being done now this kind of stat
22:26
com you think? I, I don't know if it's being
22:28
done. It certainly doesn't appear that
22:30
it's being done. And I'm not even convinced that
22:33
the goal is to reduce crime. I'm not convinced that that's
22:37
the, I see that there is an attitude today.
22:41
First of all, there's an attitude today that people who
22:46
are jumping the turnstile are jumping the turnstile because
22:49
they can't afford it. And what Giuliani said and what
22:53
Bratton said, the police commissioner, and what these,
22:55
what was what the attitude was back then was people who
22:59
committing crimes on the subway are not paying for the privilege
23:02
of going down there to commit the crimes.
23:04
They're the guys jumping the turnstile.
23:05
So if we stop guys who jumping the turnstile, we're going to
23:08
find them with guns, we're going to find them with knives, and
23:10
we're going to stop robberies. And what happened?
23:13
They started arresting all the people that were beating the
23:15
fair. And guess what?
23:17
Crime went down, robberies went down, violent crime went down.
23:20
Why? Because the people that were
23:22
coming onto the subway, not because they were going to work,
23:25
but because they were going to cause trouble.
23:28
We're not getting onto the subway.
23:29
So the formula was simple. But we have this attitude today,
23:33
like I think we misunderstand people's motives.
23:36
We look at everyone that, OK, they're poor, you know, they're
23:40
they're poor, they're put upon. Maybe there are people who are
23:43
bad actors and we've lost vision of that.
23:46
You we can't prosecute people who walk into Acvs and steal,
23:50
right? So now in New York City, CVSS
23:54
are closing and they're at there are neighborhoods where they
23:57
can't get basic items because the CVS is saying I can't do
24:02
business in this environment, it's too risky.
24:04
I have friends that work in retail that they tell me that
24:07
the rule in their chain store is that if someone is stealing, you
24:12
let them go. Correct?
24:13
You don't go after them, it's too dangerous.
24:16
It is dangerous. It is.
24:17
It's just interesting. You just let him.
24:18
Go Yeah, that makes sense you. Don't even call the police.
24:20
Look, you just let it go. You write it off, it's like,
24:22
it's almost like they know it's like jumping the turnstile,
24:24
right? They know they can get away with
24:26
it, which is the mentality that's happening.
24:28
Like a tax write off. What should I feel like?
24:29
You know, a lot of my friends have been telling me that
24:31
they're anxious going into New York City.
24:33
These things now, I'm a big fan of Manhattan.
24:35
I love the city. I feel like every few blocks is
24:38
another. By the way, he travels to New
24:40
York City on his own, which is another story.
24:43
I think it's very strange. Yes, it is odd.
24:45
Isn't it a little weird? Yeah.
24:46
He takes a trip with himself to the city and he takes dinner
24:49
with himself and then he walks the streets to himself.
24:52
Sometimes he'll take his dog with him, PJ, but for the most
24:55
part, and and I always ask him, I just said, Michael, how do you
24:57
do that? I.
24:58
Love Manhattan. There's so much to see.
25:00
There's so many projects going on, there's so many markets.
25:02
It's beautiful and it frustrates me that people are, you know,
25:05
anxious to go to the city. What do I tell them?
25:08
How do I tell them? Do I tell them to feel
25:10
comfortable? What's your feeling knowing the
25:12
legal side of what's happening? Right.
25:13
So will, I mean, let me ask you this, when you're in the city,
25:16
do you have to step over homeless people?
25:18
Yes, all the time. It depends where I am.
25:20
OK, but for the most part but. You know I mean.
25:22
You know they're there. They're there, right A. 100%
25:25
it's sad but I look away. And you see people that are
25:29
talking to themselves and look unstable wandering around all
25:34
over. OK, I do.
25:35
And do you do you think that that gives people the feeling of
25:40
safety? No.
25:42
Right. It's the opposite, Right.
25:43
So the point is, one of Giuliani's other big ideas was
25:48
broken windows theory. Right?
25:49
If you walk into a neighborhood and you see graffiti all over
25:52
the place and you see broken windows, you're going to say to
25:54
yourself, you know what? This is a bad neighborhood.
25:56
It's a red flag. It's a red flag, right?
25:58
And so and people feel less safe, even though maybe they're
26:02
totally safe, but they feel less safe.
26:05
If you walk into Manhattan and you see that there's homeless
26:10
people, that there's lawlessness, that there's people
26:13
wandering in the middle St. talking to themselves, you're
26:15
going to feel less safe. But I'll tell you, I have a
26:18
bigger problem with Manhattan. And this is also, I mean, to me,
26:22
this is just as bad, maybe not as dangerous, but just as bad.
26:27
We have cousins that live in Manhattan.
26:29
I try not to go to Manhattan so much, but we have cousins that
26:31
live in Manhattan. Once a year we go there for
26:33
Thanksgiving, OK. And we walk back to our car and
26:38
maybe it's 9:00 at night and the and people have put the garbage
26:42
out for the next day. And the rats are everywhere.
26:46
And I look at this and I say to myself, people are paying
26:51
$20,000 a month or more in rent to live here.
26:55
And this looks like a third world country who would pay for
26:59
the privilege of living like this.
27:01
So to me, that's another problem.
27:03
Why does it have to be filthy? And before you answer that
27:06
rhetorical question, the bottom line of it is that it's not
27:10
because it's so densely populate.
27:11
We've, we've dealt with these issues before.
27:14
It's never been like this before.
27:16
And so there is a certain level of decay both in society in
27:21
general. And we could talk about that,
27:24
but in Manhattan in particular and in New York City, that I
27:28
think makes people uncomfortable.
27:31
I I definitely understand. I just want to say that I'm of
27:33
course on the other side of your two opinion.
27:36
I love Manhattan and I believe if you go to New York City and
27:38
near Central Park and you close your eyes and you take in a big
27:41
smell, you have a choice. You can either smell the garbage
27:44
that put the person put the night before, or you could smell
27:46
the fresh nuts that are being brewed down the corner.
27:49
You could smell the flowers or you could smell the horse
27:50
manure. It's your, you know you.
27:52
Know but you missed. It's up to you and.
27:53
And I and I get that. What he's saying, Yeah.
27:56
And I think what I'm hearing. And I'm I'm agreeing that why
27:58
I'm resonating. With what he's saying is, you
28:00
know, New York, the officials, they get away with a lot.
28:03
You know why? Because it is the greatest city
28:05
in the world. And it's hard to screw up New
28:08
York. It's very hard.
28:09
They're doing a damn good job. They're really trying very hard.
28:12
But it is it, it's, it's an unbelievable place.
28:16
I mean, you people from all over the world come thousands and
28:18
thousands of miles to come see New York even for a day or two.
28:21
You know, everybody always asks everybody one question.
28:23
Have you ever been to New York yet?
28:24
You ever, ever been to New York, Right.
28:25
It's an amazing city and it could be so much better.
28:29
It could be so much better, but they're just not doing the right
28:32
things. And this is really a sample of
28:34
what you see all over the country in all the big cities.
28:36
This is the biggest struggle that they have.
28:38
I agree. And they take advantage of the
28:40
situation because they don't have to try very hard.
28:42
And they can still charge $20,000 or more.
28:44
Like we slid that in by the way, or more or more a month.
28:47
It's ridiculous the prices that are there.
28:49
You know, there's a guy on TikTok, I don't know if you
28:51
know, he has a channel. He goes around asking people,
28:55
hey, you live in New York, how much do you pay for rent?
28:57
And see, Steve gives him an answer and he says, you mind if
28:59
I see your apartment? And he usually people say, yeah,
29:01
they know who he is, the famous guy.
29:03
So it's, oh, it's your guy from TikTok.
29:04
Yeah, sure. Let me show you my apartment.
29:06
And you see, it's amazing. These people live in four by
29:09
fours. They live in a hole in the wall.
29:11
Some of these people have like a closet.
29:13
And in the closet they have like a bed that goes up against the
29:15
wall. They take a death.
29:16
And so they sleep. They sleep there.
29:17
They eat there. They go to the bathroom there.
29:19
And he asked them how much you pay?
29:21
Well, I'm paying $1400 a month. I'm paying $2400 a month.
29:24
I'm talking about small than this room.
29:27
It's like every square inch is so valuable.
29:30
And in this city we're letting it get worse and worse and
29:34
worse. And this is mediocrity at best.
29:37
We could do so much better. And I love the fact that Jewel
29:40
and this is known. This is known that when Giuliani
29:43
and I'm not a big fan of Giuliani in general, but you
29:45
can't take away from him the credit what he did in the city
29:47
at the time. He did an amazing job and we
29:50
need more of these of these big cities to follow suit.
29:54
And what you said, accountability, when you have
29:57
accountability, people fall in line.
29:59
And when people fall in line, everything is better.
30:01
Everybody's better for it when people fall in line.
30:04
So I wanna ask you a question, having said this again, what I'm
30:08
saying is in a perfect world, probably never gonna happen.
30:11
Is there any merit this is gonna be, you know, might put you off
30:15
a little bit and I apologize in advance, but is there any merit
30:17
to saying, look, guns are dangerous, guns are bad, they do
30:21
bad things. What do you need a gun for?
30:23
If you're, if you have a gun, you typically do something bad
30:25
with it. Is there any type of path where
30:30
perhaps we should limit guns? Perhaps we should instead of
30:34
applying our efforts into getting everybody to get their
30:37
own, you know, permits they can carry and more people that are
30:39
carrying the same. True.
30:41
It's very one extreme, but other extreme, which I don't know if
30:45
I'm a fan of, but I, I hear it and there are a lot of people
30:48
that are voicing this. Do you see a path where we limit
30:51
it instead of expanding on it? Maybe that could be a solution
30:55
because there's some type of way that can ever work.
30:58
I think it's a great question. I, I think it's a fair question.
31:00
I think it's a great question. And I think we'd be remiss if we
31:02
didn't discuss it. So let's discuss it, right.
31:04
So they've done this in, in, in, in other parts of the world.
31:09
They've done it in England. And what they found out was
31:12
people are stabbing each other now.
31:14
So now they want to limit pointy knives, and I'm not joking,
31:18
there's really legislation. Because guns don't kill people,
31:22
people correct? Right.
31:23
So that, I mean, that's 100% correct, right?
31:26
And so people have been killing people since way before the gun
31:29
was invented. OK, so now you've got a couple
31:32
of problems here in this country, right?
31:34
Because we talked about the constitutional right.
31:36
And so I look at it this way. How long have we been fighting
31:41
this war on drugs in this country?
31:43
Forever. Forever.
31:44
It's got to be 75 years minimum, right?
31:47
And my question is, how much have we spent?
31:51
Have we spent we we spent billions.
31:53
Have we spent trillions? I think we spent trillions,
31:55
right? And I'm talking about all the
31:56
people that we thrown in prison and all the law enforcement have
31:59
trillions of dollars. OK.
32:01
So are there less drugs today on the street after fighting this
32:07
war for 75 years then there were 75 years ago?
32:11
Give me two. Minutes.
32:12
I'll be able to find any drug you want.
32:14
That that. That's how Rampant did it,
32:16
correct? Correct.
32:17
So my point to you is we have 300 million guns in the country.
32:24
OK? Now we're gonna now we're gonna
32:25
impose restrictions, OK? What?
32:28
Drugs at least get consumed, right?
32:30
If we really say, OK, no more drugs are coming into this
32:32
country, at some point they're gonna get consumed.
32:34
Guns don't get consumed. So now you tell me what happens
32:38
to the 300 million guns that are already here and who gets them
32:42
and who's responsible for them? And I'll tell you what, if you
32:47
pass a law tomorrow that says you got to turn in your gun, I'm
32:52
turning in my gun. He's turning his gun.
32:54
He's turning in his gun. But let me ask you a question.
32:57
The guy who just got out of prison that doesn't care about
33:00
doing any jail time, is he turning into his gun?
33:04
So to me, these gun control laws select for the people that are
33:09
willing to follow the law and the people that are willing to
33:12
follow the law, they're the ones who are going to say, you know
33:15
what? I don't care about going to
33:16
prison. I just got out of prison last
33:18
week. I'm not turning in my gun.
33:19
That's a great answer. You know, Peter, you literally
33:21
like answered the question. Spot on that I I feel like you
33:24
answered my question like I now I am now going to be the voice
33:28
of that ship has sailed. We can no longer go in the model
33:32
of let's try to control it. Let's limit it.
33:34
Nobody should have guns. That ship of sail.
33:37
We're past that. You're right.
33:38
There are millions, hundreds of millions of ammunition that's
33:41
already in distress in the possession of people that
33:44
shouldn't have them. And I'll turn mine in.
33:46
You'll we're we're law abiding citizens for the most part.
33:49
Stefan, not so much. He's a little more a little more
33:51
risque, but for the for most of us, the other guys are not
33:54
turning their their weapons in so fast.
33:56
So right now we have to fight fire with fire.
33:59
That's what we're up to. Sounds like.
34:00
Is that is that what you're saying?
34:02
I don't think you have a choice. I, I've never heard anyone give
34:04
me an alternative. I'm, I'm willing to listen.
34:07
I, as I said, I've been in this business for 33 years.
34:10
I've been on both sides of lawn. And if someone came to me and
34:13
said, you know what, I've got a better mousetrap.
34:15
I've got an idea. We're gonna, we're gonna save
34:17
lives. But everyone's idea always
34:22
relies on nonsense. The fact is, show me something
34:25
that worked. Show me a place where it works.
34:29
Let's go with this for a second, guys.
34:30
But you know, I, there's a challenge that exists,
34:33
especially living in New York, right, where New York and New
34:36
Jersey are so close to one another.
34:37
And I'd like to ask you from a technical and a legal
34:39
standpoint, what are we to do? What, what, what are we supposed
34:42
to do? So we have a concealed carry and
34:45
I have a store in Queens, which this is a true story that
34:47
happened to someone I know. And three people come in and
34:51
they rob the guy to his face with knives.
34:55
And the guy doesn't know what to do.
34:56
He's scared. He has a gun on him, but he just
34:58
doesn't want to take it out at that moment.
35:00
That's three on one. What's he waiting for?
35:02
Well, because his life has not been threatened yet.
35:05
There's three guys with knives robbing.
35:06
Him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:07
He's not taking out his gun because it's scary and he'll
35:10
tell you the problem in New York with taking out your gun, hence
35:13
the story I'm about to tell you. So they ran out quickly and he
35:16
ran after them and he took out his gun and he said give me my
35:19
stuff back and get out of here. They gave the stuff back.
35:23
They got out of there, but you know where they went to the
35:25
police station, the police station, and they filed a report
35:29
and this man was arrested. Stop.
35:31
It. Real true story Peter.
35:34
Don't tell me you never heard these type of stories.
35:35
Before I deal this is I'm on the front lines of this OK, this is
35:39
what I deal with on a how? Are we supposed to deal with
35:40
this? You just.
35:41
You're saying that story's actually viable?
35:43
That can actually happen. I'm telling you that it's not
35:46
only viable, it's probable. I could predict where that story
35:50
was going. So I have a guy by the way, you
35:53
don't understand. This is my This is my
35:55
day-to-day. So, you know, you give me a
35:57
concealed carry, you can go to New York, but be careful
36:00
traveling through New Jersey. You can't go to Times Square.
36:03
If you're threatened and you pull it out, you're gonna get
36:05
arrested. What is happening?
36:06
Right, Right. Please explain to us.
36:08
So even if you have a gun, they're not even letting you use
36:11
it. Well, it's worse than that,
36:13
right? So New York and you know, we the
36:17
term threat to democracy, threat democracy is a term that's
36:20
thrown around the lot these and, and to me, there is a big threat
36:25
to democracy in this, which is that we have these institutions
36:30
which have stood the test of time.
36:32
And the Supreme Court in 2022 told New York, you have to honor
36:37
people's constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
36:41
You have to give people license to carry guns.
36:43
And you know what New York said? Oh, you're telling us we have to
36:45
give people a license to carry guns.
36:48
We're going to make it so that they can't carry it any place
36:51
and we're going to limit where they can carry it.
36:53
So now it's working its way through the courts and now, and
36:57
there's a lot of litigation and most of what New York past has
37:00
been stayed by different federal judges.
37:03
But in the interim, you have New York saying, OK, you're telling
37:07
us that we have to give people gun licenses.
37:10
We're telling you're telling us we have to let them carry it in
37:13
all these various places. Fine.
37:15
We're going to make sure that if they use it, they're never going
37:18
to see the light of day again. And so you have these bodega
37:21
owners, if you read the New York Post, these bodega owners who
37:24
are fearing for their lives, who are defending themselves and
37:28
defending their stores are getting thrown in Rikers Island
37:31
for, for, for defending their lives.
37:33
I was on my way to, I go on a lot of podcasts.
37:37
I don't know why this is my life.
37:38
You're a podcast junkie. I was on my way to a podcast
37:41
this past Thursday night. OK, eight O clock at night.
37:43
How are we doing? So, and I'm having a great time.
37:47
Appreciate that. So it turns out that my
37:51
answering service calls me, it's eight O clock at night.
37:54
I have a guy on the phone. She tells me that he's in, he's
37:57
in lock up in the 72nd briefing in Brooklyn and he discharged
38:04
his weapon. OK, so I get him on the phone.
38:06
What happened? He got he owns a jewelry store
38:09
and he had a employee there. Oh boy.
38:12
He has some mental issues, but he's with him, been with him for
38:14
a long time. They ended up in a dispute.
38:17
The guy picks up a chair and it's on video, picks up a chair
38:21
and lunges at him with the chair over his head.
38:24
And he pulled out a gun and he said, I didn't want to shoot the
38:27
guy. So I just turned a little bit
38:29
shot into the refrigerator and you could see it's all on video.
38:33
The, the person with the chair over his head drops the chair
38:36
immediately and puts his his hands over his ears.
38:39
So he should be this is a hero. I mean, he saved his own life
38:44
and didn't have to take this guy's life.
38:47
So the cops didn't know what to do with New York City and big
38:51
meeting and supervisor and they said, look, you, you discharge
38:56
your weapon. We got it.
38:57
We got to arrest now arrest. Arrest for what?
39:00
He didn't do anything wrong. He had a license to carry the
39:03
gun. He.
39:05
He was in a dangerous situation. He was in his own store.
39:08
You could even see him at one point when the guy picks up a
39:10
jail, he takes a step back and the guy lunges at him.
39:13
That's. So backwards.
39:14
And this was, by the way, this is not a long time ago.
39:17
This is this past Thursday. This was my Thursday night.
39:20
And and Friday was spent dealing with this guy.
39:23
He was in jail 30 hours awaiting seeing a judge or an
39:29
arraignment. Yeah, we saw a judge Friday,
39:32
maybe 6:00 at night. And he was released on his own
39:35
recognizance. But 30 hours in jail, what's the
39:38
message? Right.
39:40
Do you want to spend 30 hours in jail?
39:42
Do I want to spend 30 hours in jail?
39:43
No. By the way, there's plenty of
39:45
people 30 hours in jail. 30 hours in jail.
39:47
I could do it on one toe. I do 30 hours of jail, like, you
39:51
know, like that. But for a guy like this who
39:56
applied for his license, waited a year to get it, went through
39:59
the background checks on the training, put him in jail for 30
40:03
hours? For what?
40:06
You should get a reward. He should get a reward.
40:07
This guy should get a reward. And he did everything right.
40:10
And, and, and in my opinion, even more than he did everything
40:13
right. Really a hero who thought fast.
40:17
He did everything right. He tried to retreat when he
40:19
could, and when he couldn't retreat, he still didn't resort
40:22
to deadly. Let me ask you something.
40:23
This guy that you dealt with Thursday night, all of these
40:26
officials were, be it the judge that was involved, be it the
40:30
police officer that was arresting him, all the people
40:32
that were involved in this. Do any of them feel good about
40:35
what has been happening and what they've been a part of?
40:38
Does any of them feel, are they all oblivious to how the rest of
40:40
us see this story, the public see the story, or are there
40:42
really people involved? And is it actually say, oh,
40:44
yeah, this is the way it should go down?
40:46
Yeah, this guy discharged his firearm.
40:48
He should actually go jump for 30 hours.
40:49
Is there anybody in the world that's involved in this that
40:52
would say that? It's a good question.
40:55
Because if there isn't, I'd like to know why is this still
40:57
happening. I just want to clarify he did
40:59
take a shot. He took a shot in refrigerator
41:02
so no one got hurt. No, no, I get that.
41:03
But I'm saying there are stories that I've confirmed that where
41:07
people have not taken. Correct.
41:09
Just discharging the weapon gets you arrested.
41:11
Correct 100. Percent right, correct.
41:12
That's that's the challenge. So people shouldn't think, oh,
41:15
he shot the gun. It's not normal.
41:17
It's not. It's insane if you.
41:18
Take out your gun, you're automatically getting arrested.
41:20
And Oshi has a great question and I'd love to hear what you
41:23
have to say about that. But I'm I'm gonna give you
41:25
another example. I'm gonna answer your question
41:27
with another example, OK? It's it's such a great question
41:30
because I just dealt with this today, OK?
41:32
This is my everyday. OK, So I have a guy, he two guys
41:36
in the back of a car. They had licenses.
41:39
This is going back now probably six years.
41:42
They had licenses from the state of Massachusetts.
41:46
They came to, this is before Bruin.
41:48
They came to Manhattan. They had the guns with
41:50
Massachusetts licenses. Massachusetts license is not a
41:53
Texas license. Very hard to get.
41:55
And they were stopped for a routine.
41:58
The cop said they passed the red light.
42:00
There were five of them in the car.
42:02
Everyone got pulled out. Everyone got patted down.
42:04
Why It was not a problem. So this guy who I'm representing
42:11
now, I did not represent back six years ago.
42:14
I represented the other guy in the back of a car with a gun.
42:18
He was represented by a free attorney and he was a combat
42:23
veteran. He was in Afghanistan.
42:26
He was in the military. He's a disabled veteran.
42:29
And when I dealt with this case, and remember, this was in
42:32
Manhattan, and that's my old office, my old boss who I was
42:35
working with on this case, he said to me, Peter, I want you to
42:38
be ready for what's going to happen, OK?
42:40
This guy's a combat veteran, carries a lot of weight around.
42:43
He's going to do a lot better than your client.
42:45
Yeah. Going back to before brewing, it
42:47
was a mandatory minimum of 3 1/2 years in prison if you had an
42:50
illegal gun and the Massachusetts license didn't
42:52
count. So they're telling these guys,
42:54
you know, look, take two years in prison or you're going or, or
42:58
we'll send you to prison for five or more, maximum of 15.
43:03
So anyway, this guy gets an opportunity, the the combat
43:06
veteran, it's an opportunity to plead guilty for probation.
43:10
And he pleads guilty, My guy. Who I have so much respect for
43:16
because he had such guts to do. He said, you know what, these
43:20
guys violating my rights. I'm challenging this case and we
43:24
ended up doing and they threatened him numerous times
43:26
that you're going to be in prison, prison.
43:28
And we ended up doing a 5 day suppression here.
43:32
Judge Juan Marshawn, he may have heard that name.
43:35
He's been in the news a lot. Once or twice.
43:38
And he denied our motion to suppress the gun.
43:41
Unanimously reversed by the Appellate Division.
43:44
And about three years after the arrest, my client was exonerated
43:49
and the indictment was dismissed.
43:51
He violated his right now the combat veteran calls me up and
43:54
said, can you do the same thing for me?
43:56
And I said, I don't know, let me try.
44:01
And so today I was dealing with this case because this is still
44:04
going on. We've made a motion to dismiss
44:06
his invite. Now, the appellate court ruled
44:09
that the entire car stop was unconstitutional.
44:13
These guys should have never been stopped, should never been
44:15
searched. And now you also have Bruin,
44:18
which says, you know, look, these guys had a Constitution,
44:20
right to have the gun anyway. So there's a lot of grounds why
44:24
and not the guy's done with his probation.
44:26
It's over. It's not about that.
44:28
Should he be a convicted felon for the rest of his life?
44:30
Sure, he wants to clean his Rep He.
44:31
Wants to clean his Rep. And So what I'm hearing from the
44:36
prosecutor's office and we're going to meet with the judge
44:39
about this is look, we agree that his the right thing to do
44:43
is his indictment should be dismissed.
44:46
We don't see a legal path to do it.
44:49
He already pled guilty. He didn't challenge this.
44:51
We don't see a legal path. And my response was and my
44:55
response is going to be when we meet with the judge on this next
44:58
week. I didn't go to law school to do
45:01
the wrong thing because the law mandates it.
45:04
We have to get out of this mindset, right?
45:07
And that was a long winded answer to your question.
45:09
But there was so many people stuck in the orthodoxy.
45:16
The fact that you know. They're like, right, It's all
45:18
about what the law says and what there's no common sense anymore.
45:22
Now, at the same time, you have to be careful because I am
45:26
criticizing New York because I feel New York is not complying
45:29
with the Bruin decision. And we, I talk about threat to
45:33
democracy and I say this is a threat to democracy.
45:35
If you have the highest court in the country, the Supreme Court,
45:40
saying this is the law, and you say, OK, we're going to not
45:43
follow the law, then to me, that is a threat to democracy.
45:47
OK, You have to respect these institutions.
45:50
So the law is important. I'm a lawyer.
45:52
I'm not suggesting we should break the law.
45:54
But what I'm saying is we are experienced, we are
45:59
knowledgeable, and I refuse to believe that the law doesn't
46:05
make any allowance for a situation like this where
46:08
everyone in the room, the prosecutor, defense attorney and
46:11
the judge agree what the right thing.
46:13
And therefore, but we're going to do the wrong thing because
46:15
the law, because we believe the law says we have to.
46:20
You know, you're saying it so well by the I want you to run
46:22
for office 1 day and we will support you back here.
46:25
OK? You're going to have because you
46:26
really are making sense that you're not getting stuck in the
46:29
mud where this is how it has to be.
46:31
This is how it's always been. Like you're willing to actually
46:33
open your mind and really break it down and see what's fear,
46:36
what's right, what's the really the right thing to do, right?
46:39
And you got to protect the law. You got it.
46:41
There has to be integrity. Of course, there's always got to
46:43
be rules, but not to the point where it's hurting people.
46:46
It's the, the rules are meant to help us.
46:49
If it's hurting us, then there's something wrong here with the
46:51
whole picture. But let me tell you something, I
46:53
remember this. I saw this clip.
46:54
I'll never forget it and it I saw this clip probably 3-4 years
46:57
ago and I still remember it till today.
46:59
I'm a big fan of Tucker Carlson. I'm a big fan of his.
47:02
I like the I like the way he thinks.
47:03
I like his style and I especially like his delivery.
47:06
I like the way he yeah, he's good.
47:07
I like the way he gives. I like the way he looks at
47:09
people. Yeah, he looks at them like, you
47:11
know, possibly be this stupid. Exactly.
47:13
He's very quick on his feet. Yes, very quick on his feet.
47:15
You cannot debate him. So in any case, he's
47:17
interviewing this guy, Eric Swalwell, who's who's a
47:20
Democrat. I know the guy.
47:21
OK, you know. I had her own personally, but I
47:23
know of them. OK, yeah, so we interviewed him,
47:25
and they're talking about this very issue about guns, the
47:27
rights to bear arms. Ryan, Eric Swallow's tongue.
47:30
Tucker. Like Tucker, let's be honest.
47:32
Why do you need a gun? Call the police if there's a
47:35
problem. Why do you really need a gun?
47:36
Because I don't understand. He says you don't need a gun
47:39
because you walked into my office today with security
47:41
guards who are holding guns. So you have people to protect
47:44
you. And that's easy for you to tell
47:46
me not to have guns to protect myself.
47:48
He's never talking. You worried people who are after
47:50
you. And I'm a public figure.
47:52
I need to have people protecting you with guns.
47:54
He's worried you think your life is more important than mine.
47:57
You think you have a more of a right to protect your family
48:00
more than I have a right to protect mine.
48:01
And you know, for a second, like Eric looked like, wait a second,
48:04
that was probably a bad, a bad argument that I made because
48:06
he's right. My life is not any more
48:08
important than than his is right.
48:10
So we should all have the God-given right.
48:12
We should all be able to defend what's most important to us,
48:14
which is our families comments before anybody else.
48:17
It's be killed or kill, right? We're gonna we're gonna do what
48:20
we have to do 100%. But I'll say this,
48:24
unfortunately, this is the society that we live in and we
48:27
have to adapt and we got to do things.
48:29
But tell me, what are the three states that have the most
48:35
restrictive gun laws in the country?
48:38
I imagine New York is is is in the top three.
48:41
I would what? Are the other two.
48:42
I would put New York up there. New York.
48:43
Is for sure up. There, and I can't say that I
48:46
know the law so well in other states, but I would think that
48:48
California would be up there. I would imagine.
48:51
Hawaii, believe it or not, really would have to be.
48:54
Hawaii. Hawaii.
48:55
I think of Hawaii as this. Like there's no crime in Hawaii.
48:57
Exactly. Everybody's at the beach
48:59
drinking, you know, drinking daiquiris and that's it.
49:03
Very anti gun, very anti gun there.
49:05
Massachusetts also. Stop right there.
49:08
Let's say those three, let's say New York, California, and
49:10
Massachusetts. I imagine that those three
49:13
states are probably also leading the country in crime.
49:18
I would imagine that they're also the most crimes, the most
49:21
shootings, the most murders. Is there some type of connection
49:25
there? Like can we take some type of
49:27
deduction from that and look at now the three safest cities,
49:31
countries, states in the country.
49:33
Let's look at the three safest States and see what are their
49:36
gun laws? Shouldn't that tell us
49:38
something? I think it tells us an awful
49:40
lot. And there's a book out there
49:42
that's been out there for some time.
49:43
It's called and I think the title is self-explanatory by
49:46
Professor John Lott, More Guns, Less Crime.
49:49
And he did a deep dive on statistics about this and he
49:54
claims exactly that, that the more guns, the more guns extent
49:57
extent in an area, the more, the, the less crime he's going
50:01
to be. Yeah, it's basic math.
50:02
Think about it. If the bad guys already are
50:04
getting guns, they're going to get one regardless because they
50:06
want to do stuff with it. So if you have more good guys
50:09
who are going to do only good things with guns, they're not
50:10
going to shoot people randomly. They're only going to do when
50:12
they need to. Then also you're evening out,
50:14
you're leveling the playing field right now.
50:16
So the more guns you have is actually quite better.
50:18
And this was for me, that eye opening moment when I decided,
50:21
you know what all of us like I'm, you know, I thought about
50:24
God forbid those, those Jews, you know, not, not just Jews.
50:27
It was, it wasn't even just Jews.
50:29
October 7th, there was Jews, non Jews, there was Arabs, there was
50:31
other nationalities. There was well, and they were
50:34
just being mowed down 1 by 1. They're just being picked off.
50:36
And this is an Israel where they probably have more guns in the
50:39
in in Israel than they do in many other countries.
50:42
Yes and no. But not Even so.
50:44
Much surprisingly, private ownership of guns is very
50:47
difficult in depending on where you live.
50:49
In Israel, this is an unknown thing in.
50:51
Israel. This is unknown and and private
50:55
ownership of long guns is impossible.
50:58
There's no private ownership. Of long guns you tell me that,
51:00
Israel. Has gun control.
51:03
Like like like New York style gun control.
51:05
Worse. Worse.
51:06
Very difficult. But OSHA, you have to remember
51:08
the most Israelis serve in the army, so they end up being able
51:12
to carry. Because most people there are
51:15
drafted into the army. Well, but that's that, that this
51:18
is a recent change and it was only up until very recently that
51:23
first of all, being in the army didn't mean anything.
51:25
You had to be at a by you had to get to a certain rank in the
51:28
army. Now they're lowering their
51:29
standards because you have a government that's more right
51:32
wing and they and they saw what happened.
51:35
So now it's they're opening up a little bit.
51:37
But it used to be the being in the army meant nothing because
51:39
otherwise everyone could have a gun.
51:41
I had the privilege of having lunch with a police commander in
51:46
Israel a couple years back and definitely pre October 7th.
51:51
And you know, he was explaining to me how difficult it was.
51:54
This was in Petarticva in the middle of Israel.
51:58
It wasn't, you know, in the West Bank.
52:01
If you live in, if you live on the other side of the Green
52:04
Line, if you live really on the other side of the Green Line,
52:09
then you could get, you can get guns, handguns.
52:12
But like those Gaza communities were considered safe.
52:15
They couldn't get guns and there was and there was no civilian
52:19
ownership of rifles. You have people coming with RPGs
52:22
and AK-40 Sevens and you're shooting at them with, with,
52:25
with your Glock. It's not the same thing.
52:29
Wow, I have, I have to ask you a quick question.
52:31
We're going to have to wrap up soon and I'm having such a great
52:33
time. I I.
52:34
Maybe you'll have me back. I was going to say I'm inviting
52:36
you back already for for another episode because there's so much
52:39
to talk about from the legal standpoint, the technical
52:42
standpoint, which I want to jump into real quick because Ushi
52:44
started asking about different states.
52:46
This applies to all the Jews that live on the East Coast.
52:50
We're all friends with people from Lakewood, from Muncie, from
52:53
the five towns to Brooklyn. What happens?
52:56
What are those rules that we need to know?
52:58
Can you tell us and just educate us, if I'm living in the five
53:01
boroughs and I'm going to visit my friend in Lakewood, NJ, or
53:05
I'm going to visit my friend in Muncie and I have to pass
53:08
through Teaneck in order to get to him.
53:10
What are the current laws today? What am I allowed to do and is
53:14
there any way around it? Is there any way that you can
53:17
help our listeners figure out ways that I can carry when I
53:22
visit my uncle in another town, even though I'm passing through
53:25
another state? Right.
53:26
So this is a this is a great question, OK.
53:29
And this is, you know, this is a whole show.
53:32
This question could take up a whole show, but we're not going
53:34
to do that. So we're going to talk very
53:35
quick. There is something called that
53:37
every gun owner should be aware of.
53:39
It was a Reagan creation, shows you how old it is.
53:43
It's called the Firearm Owners Protection Act.
53:45
And one of the fundamental principles in the Firearm Owners
53:48
Protection Act is that you can drive through a state with a gun
53:54
from one place where you can legally possess it to another
53:57
place you can legally possess it.
53:58
Now there's a lot of rules involving this.
54:00
One of them is the gun has to be locked, unloaded separate from
54:04
the ammunition in the trunk of the vehicle.
54:07
You can't make any deviations from your from your trip really.
54:12
In other words, if you are going from Florida to to to Vermont,
54:18
where two places where you don't even need a license to possess a
54:21
gun and you have a handgun, you're not going to stop in New
54:24
York on that trip, right? You're not going to stay
54:26
overnight in a hotel in New York.
54:28
You would maybe stay in New Hampshire.
54:30
You would maybe stay someplace else.
54:33
You're not going to stay New York and New Jersey.
54:36
You need a handgun license to possess.
54:39
Well, OK, New York, you need a handgun license.
54:41
You can't touch a handgun in New York State unless you have a
54:45
license for that handgun. That means you can't go to a gun
54:47
store, You can't shoot at a range unless you have a handgun
54:50
license, very strict. And it's a very serious felony
54:55
to possess a handgun without a handgun license.
54:58
There's a lot of rules, right? So what we have in New York is I
55:02
developed, it's going back right to around the time of the
55:07
pandemic. We're about four years old.
55:08
A prepaid legal plan for gun owners in New York.
55:12
It's called New York Tax Defense, NYNY, Tax Defense,
55:15
nytacdefense.com. And what it is, is you pay my
55:18
firm $32 a month. And the principal benefit is
55:21
that if you're involved in the self-defense incident and this
55:24
guy who called me last Thursday night, he was part of the
55:27
program. So we jumped into action and
55:30
he's represented for free. He's already prepaid for $32 a
55:34
month. It's a bargain.
55:35
And we will defend you up to 1/4 of $1,000,000 of criminal
55:40
defense representation for free. But there's another huge benefit
55:43
in New York because how many people are gonna be involved in
55:45
self-defense incidents? The other big benefit is that
55:49
you have my firm behind and this is what we do.
55:52
And so if you have these kinds of questions, if you wanna know,
55:55
hey, I'm going to my brother in law's house, what can I do?
55:59
Can I Gary there? I have to drive through Times
56:01
Square and what? How much is it a month?
56:04
It starts at $32 A. Month $32 so I can get the
56:06
answer because I have friends who want to visit me from
56:09
Brooklyn and they're asking me we're coming to New York it's.
56:11
Like a very fair price. And by the way.
56:13
For what they're getting. Great program and I have friends
56:15
I believe that are part. Of I think the.
56:16
Program and good for them because they know now that again
56:20
they're more confident and especially they're learning all
56:23
the proper rules with you and and and I wanna just say this
56:28
there is. A question though you're asking
56:29
me from they're coming from. Brooklyn, let's make a clear
56:32
Yeah, exactly. Someone from Brooklyn is coming
56:34
to visit me in Muncie. They're both New York State, but
56:36
they're passing through Teaneck in order to get.
56:39
Here no problem. There's a lot of pass through
56:40
New Jersey. They're allowed to pass New
56:42
Jersey. Can they stop in New Jersey for
56:44
for lunch? So no, the answer would be no.
56:48
So they can only transport, correct?
56:50
I see. So they can't make a.
56:51
Stop blocked unloaded separate from the ammunition through New
56:53
Jersey. What did you mean by you
56:56
mentioned in there that Florida and in Vermont you don't need a
56:59
license for a gun. What did you mean by that?
57:01
OK. In most states now, and you
57:03
know, this is a trend. So now we've reached the
57:05
majority. I think it's like maybe 27
57:07
states right now have what they call constitutional carry.
57:10
If you're an adult male over the age of 2121 or over, then you
57:16
have a constitutional right to carry a gun in public without a
57:20
license. You're kidding me.
57:22
What? Did you know this?
57:23
Yeah, I did know this. OK.
57:25
And by the way, did you hear about all the crime that's going
57:27
on? You can get a gun, you don't
57:29
need a license. You can walk around with it in
57:31
Florida and we're. Functioning society believe it
57:34
people are actually getting. Along so the fact that you
57:36
didn't hear about it speaks volume.
57:37
It really. Does believe me if it was bad.
57:40
I would have known about. It you would have known.
57:42
About it and somebody would have said we got to put, we got to
57:44
institute licenses. Right, exactly.
57:46
But it's workers. You tell me that in literally in
57:48
Florida, I can go to a gun store.
57:50
I'm an adult, I can buy a gun. You can't.
57:52
Oh, I'm not a state. I'm not a resident, right?
57:54
A resident of Florida couldn't buy a gun.
57:57
And carry it around. A handgun, A handgun, A Glock.
58:00
A Glock. You're kidding.
58:04
No, I'm not. So one second, are you telling
58:06
me that New York is a different country?
58:08
Then how is it possible that in the same country can be such a
58:11
vast difference? You know, I've said this for
58:14
years and years, the cultural differences between Texas and
58:18
New York. I mean, I think that we have
58:19
more cultural similarities with London and New York across the
58:25
Atlantic Ocean than we do with Texas and.
58:26
What's up with that? It's, it's, it's our system.
58:29
And by the way, it's, it's on one hand, it's a beautiful
58:32
country and it's beautiful and I love going down South for this
58:36
reason. On the other hand, it's
58:38
unbelievable. And we have a lawsuit going on
58:40
right now against the NYPD and we have a against their
58:43
licensing division. And one of our contentions,
58:46
there's a couple of different aspects of this lawsuit is that
58:48
they hacked it by law, by the Constitution of the United
58:52
States, accept the gun licenses of other states that basically
58:55
if you're licensed in New Jersey, in Texas, in
58:57
Massachusetts, wherever they should be required less than a
59:01
federal judge to order them to accept those licenses.
59:03
They accept the gun licenses. I'm sorry, the driver's licenses
59:06
from every other state, they do. And you're a resident from
59:09
London and have a London driver's license and you're
59:12
driving around New York and you show it to a cop, you're here on
59:15
vacation, you're not getting a ticket, right, but a gun
59:19
license. And this is a constitutional
59:21
right they will not accept. I wish you luck on that lawsuit,
59:25
by the way. Let us know how that goes.
59:27
That's amazing and we couldn't agree more.
59:28
I mean, if it works in one state, it should work in the
59:31
other states as well. We're all it's all part of the
59:32
same country at the end of the day.
59:33
But you know, there's there's so many of these types of things
59:36
that really goes on that makes no sense.
59:38
And you know, it's just it is what it is.
59:40
It's this is the way it's always been done.
59:41
But there are people like you who stand up for people like me.
59:45
And, you know, thank God that we.
59:47
I was about to say I thank you on behalf of our communities for
59:51
helping us feel safer. And it's just, you know, it
59:54
feels good to have you with us and, and educating us.
59:57
Yeah. But when when you're not busy
59:58
with guns and criminals, what do you like to do?
1:00:01
What do you do typically for what's your hobby outside of
1:00:03
what we just talked about? Today, so I am very involved in
1:00:08
community security and synagogue security.
1:00:10
Oh really? I spent a lot of time on that.
1:00:12
But also I have a a nice family. I have a new granddaughter.
1:00:18
I spend a lot. Of time with them.
1:00:20
Thank you. Nothing like it, huh?
1:00:21
Yeah. And so, you know, the family
1:00:24
keeps me very busy. That's your granddaughter,
1:00:26
Carrie. Yeah.
1:00:27
Oh, yeah. She's she, but she's already
1:00:29
been to the rate. She's six months old.
1:00:31
Yeah, Peter, we have something that we like to do tradition on
1:00:34
our none of your business podcasts.
1:00:35
Before we let you go, we ask you to think of a guest that would
1:00:39
be a a select guest that you think would add value to our
1:00:44
growth of our podcast, which what we're trying to do here in
1:00:46
general is grow personally and professionally.
1:00:48
Who do you think would be a good guest that you can ask that's in
1:00:51
your Rolodex that you say you know what, this would be a good
1:00:53
person to go on your podcast? OK, so I'll tell you there's a
1:00:57
very, very interesting guy. He's a good friend of mine and I
1:01:00
don't want to throw any friends under the bus.
1:01:02
I don't have his permission to mention his name, but he is a
1:01:05
lawyer in the area. He was a police officer in
1:01:08
California. He, you may know who this person
1:01:11
is as I describe him. He's a police officer in
1:01:13
California, grew up for a reform.
1:01:15
He's now and he does criminal defense and traffic tickets.
1:01:22
All right, Peter, that was a great suggestion.
1:01:23
I want to thank you for coming. It was a pleasure for us to have
1:01:27
you here. And really, you educated us and
1:01:30
I feel like we grew in terms of our knowledge and understanding
1:01:33
of how to keep ourselves safer. Yeah, Yeah.
1:01:35
I have one more question. I'm sorry, man.
1:01:36
Please go for apologize. It was a very important
1:01:39
question. OK, this might be the most
1:01:40
important question that we've covered till.
1:01:42
How about you start the question and we end it with the next
1:01:45
episode when it's? A cliffhanger?
1:01:48
Exactly. Yeah.
1:01:48
He asked the question, and he asked to come back and answer
1:01:51
it. OK, go.
1:01:52
But this is gonna help thousands of people.
1:01:54
Like, they're gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be
1:01:56
depending on this answer that you're gonna give.
1:01:58
OK. It's a lot of pressure.
1:01:59
You ready for this? Yes.
1:02:00
OK, given that you've been in the court scene for a long time
1:02:04
and you understand, you know, how the nature of things work
1:02:06
behind the scenes and all that, which TV show is the most
1:02:10
accurate depiction of what really goes on?
1:02:13
What TV show would you recommend somebody watch?
1:02:16
Look, no TV show is 100%, of course not, right?
1:02:19
But law and order, Law and order, yeah, yeah, Very
1:02:21
depictive of what I used to do for a little.
1:02:23
So not Boston Legal. Not Boston Legal, OK.
1:02:26
That's my favorite. What about suits?
1:02:27
What about the show suits? You know, suits.
1:02:29
So I've watched it. Interesting, but.
1:02:31
Everybody wants to be that guy. Right.
1:02:33
Of course, you know, but you're asking me about what's reality
1:02:36
versus wanting to be that guy. And the reality of it is, I
1:02:39
think, law and order. So law and order is actually
1:02:41
pretty an accurate depiction of what goes on.
1:02:43
Absolutely. Very interesting.
1:02:45
OK, noted. All right, guys.
1:02:47
Well, thanks for joining for another wonderful episode.
1:02:49
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1:02:51
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1:02:54
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1:02:58
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