Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, Time, Luck and Load. Michael
Very Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's Charlie from BlackBerry Smoke.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I can feel a good when coming on. It's the
Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I have been hearing from a number of listeners with
concerns about backdoor gun regulation. Fact of the matter is,
gun regulation by Congress is unpopular. That's why they don't
pass laws. That's why they hide, that's why they campaign
on it. When they have control of the House, Senate,
(00:49):
in the White House, they don't act aggressively like they
do with spending bills, for instance, because the public is
against it. I've said this for years before. There are
a lot of people out there that will let the
government tax them into bankruptcy without ever raising their voice.
But you dare try to take their gun. They recognize that.
(01:13):
That is how they leave you helpless, and they want
you helpless for a reason. People get it, they understand
it well. One of the things I've been hearing from
a lot of listeners is concern and not just gun
shops and gun buyers and sellers, but concerns with regard
to credit card purchases and how this is sort of
(01:34):
a back doorway to de facto limit gun sales, and
it's very disturbing. So we went out and asked Sam Paratis,
California's executive director of Gun Owners of America, to join
us and explain to us and you exactly what's happening.
Sam take it away.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Well, Michael, you're absolutely correct. We have not only the
specter of the two pre eminent law enforcement agencies FBI
and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco on farms and Explosives
that are ginning up and creating laws that they have
no authority to do. We now have this effort with
the support of the anti gun movement and anti gun
(02:16):
members of the Congress, who have pushed the major banks
and the credit card suppliers to create this special number
with the ISO, which is the international organization that establishes
categories to identify purchases with credit cards, and they are
(02:36):
giving a special tag to any purchases made by gun stores.
That means that anything that you buy from a gun
store can actually be tracked, and the credit card agencies
can give this information to law enforcement or departments of
Justice at various states upon request in order for them
(02:57):
to have the ability to track the fact that you
are buying things at gun stores, and it really doesn't
matter if it's guns or animal or tents, or clothing
or shoes or dry light, food or backpacks, it doesn't matter.
They will identify any expenditure that you make at a
gun store and flag it. Number One, they can prevent
(03:21):
the sale from going through until they contact you or
you contact them in order to verify that this is
an approved expenditure, and you'll have to explain to them
what it is that.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You are buying.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Number two, they can send that information to the BATF
or the FBI for tracking. And number three, at the
request of departments of justice, which we just heard here
in California, the Turns General is requesting that information from
credit card companies and banks so that they can track
people who are spending their dollars at gun stores. So
(03:59):
it doesn't matter if it's a four thousand dollars safe
you go into your buy a safe. Oh my goodness,
they think you might be buying a bunch of illicit
guns for evil purposes, and therefore they're going to stop
the transaction, put you on a list, and identify you
as a possible future criminal. So it's it's hideous. Man.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Well, one thing people should be concerned about because a
number of our listeners over the years I've noticed with
stop and see it, with Fourth Amendment protections, I'll talk
about why you don't want just random checkpoints. You don't want,
you know, knock down your door to check in your
bedroom or in your bedside stand, and you know, rifle
(04:39):
and the Patriot Act and rifling through your bank transactions.
They have this idea, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, well,
the government accumulating harvesting your information. We have seen again
and again where they will use that toward nefarious ends.
And so you're protect is that they don't get it
(05:02):
in the first place. The problem here is it's a
non governmental entity. Visa MasterCard is MX.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Part of this, American Express is part of.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It, okay, And so the problem is is they're using
these third party individuals, these third party corporations to harvest
information that could then be used against people. I mean,
this is their gun tracking effectively, Michael.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
You hit the nail on the head. They're trying to
be so sneaky about this, which is odious to use
these third party actors as the repository of the information
for them. This way they can claim with their tongue
and their cheeks saying we're not keeping these databases, we
(05:51):
are not doing these registries, when in fact, because they
have total access to the registries that are collected by
the banks and the credit card companies, it is the
same thing. They can delve into those. It is like
it's like it's a terrible situation and they're lying through
their teeth. They're making it seem like it's not something
(06:14):
that it really is. So we have plenty to be
concerned about if you don't want to be tracked. Let's
face it, the only purpose for registration is to eventually
confiscate firearms. Registration people who have worked for atf and
FBI have said has never, rarely, if ever been successful
(06:36):
in helping them sell the crime. But it has been
used to confiscate guns. Here in the state of California,
on two separate occasions, gun registries were used to confiscate
guns from lawful citizens in the state of California who
were complying with the law, but the laws changed and
those registry systems were used to confiscate those guns.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It is the proverbial camel's nose under the timp, Sam Paraitis,
thanks for being our guests, sir, It's.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Always a pleasure. Michael, I look forward to being with
you again. Fellows.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
You know that when the government says just the tip,
they don't mean just the tip.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
There's more to like on Facebook, like the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I received a mean and it's two stick figures. They're
both sitting on stools and one is gesturing like he's talking,
the other one is sitting kind of resigned like he
is listening. And the title of it is Being taught
(07:48):
to avoid talking about politics and religion has led to
a lack of understanding of politics and religion. What we
should have been taught was how to have a civil
(08:10):
conversation about a difficult topic. I'll read that again, being
taught to avoid talking about politics and religion. Think about
how many times in your life you've been told no,
(08:37):
two things. You don't talk about politics and religion. Why
the two of the most important things related to the
human condition. What else is there? Being taught to avoid
talking about politics and religion has led to a lack
(08:59):
of understanding of politics and religion. If we're uncomfortable talking
about those things, talking is how we express ourselves, which
forces us to structure our arguments. When people are uncomfortable
(09:24):
talking about something, it often means that they can't quite
process it. They can't figure out where to put it,
they can't figure out what they feel about it, They
can't begin to explain what their problem with it is,
(09:49):
what their opposition to it is, why it gives them
such discomfort. You should be able to explain them those things,
and if you cannot explain those things, there's a good
reason for it. If a conversation about that subject makes
(10:12):
you uncomfortable, that's a sign. Being taught to avoid talking
about politics and religion has led to a lack of
understanding of politics and religion. What we should have been
taught was how to have a civil conversation about a
(10:36):
difficult topic. When we don't talk about things, we drive
them underground. You could put under politics and religion, you
could put race. Because people are very uncomfortable talking about race.
(10:58):
And my belief is that you should be able to
talk about race the way you talk about everything else.
And that is the reason you should have picked up
on this already. That is the reason why I inject
race into things in a very whimsical way, because it's
not taboo. It shouldn't scare you, it shouldn't frighten you.
(11:22):
It shouldn't be something that when you hear you immediately
look around both ways and who's going to lose their job,
who's going to get in trouble, who's going to be boycotted?
And that's what people do. In fact, some of you
do that. I've actually witnessed it with my own eyes.
(11:44):
In the middle of a conversation, I will say, for
no good reason, when they're just saying, so, this guy
walks into the restaurant, was he black? Well, why would
you ask that? Why does that upset you? If I
had said is he tall? You wouldn't have panicked. If
(12:05):
I'd said is he right handed? You wouldn't have panicked
if I'd said was he wearing a coat? I'm asking
you to give me details about the person in the story.
That's how we tell a story. We set the time,
(12:25):
the place, the who, what where, We describe the person
to paint a picture. If you read Himmingway talking about
the guy in the bar, as your narrator is walking
(12:46):
into the bar, he will describe not just that the
man is wearing glasses, but that they're pink, snaz or
however you pronounce it, glasses, And he may give you
the color. He'll tell tell you whether they create an
oval effect on the eye. He doesn't just tell you
the guy's wearing a hat. He'll tell you how the
(13:08):
hat's sitting on his head.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
He doesn't just.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Tell you that the guy's white. Will tell you whether
he's sunburned or whether he looks like he's worked on
a marina doc his entire life. He doesn't just tell
you what kind of clothes. He tells you how those
clothes are hanging. Do they look like thrift store clothes
or designer clothes? Are they well worn from that day
(13:34):
or did he pick them up off the floor. So
why is race a subject that is simply a descriptor
that makes people so uncomfortable? Well, there are people who
have taught you or scared you into believing that that's
(13:54):
a thing you have to pretend doesn't exist, which is
really stupid. If I walk into a group of black
guys and they say Mike be was up, and then
I leave, and somebody who doesn't know me comes out
of the bathroom and they go who were all talking to.
They wouldn't say a human being. Okay, well I saw
(14:18):
four people walk in which one were you all talking
to the person who was wearing a shirt. Okay, there
were four people wearing a shirt. They would say, you
know that white boy, you saw him. That's not a
bad thing. That doesn't offend me because it's true. And
(14:42):
that's how they separate me from the Asian guy, the
Hispanic guy, and the caveman that walked with him with
me who might have also been a white man, but
we're really not sure because some of those early civilizations,
you kid say, you know, I want to ask you
(15:04):
people to do yourself a favor right now and rock
somebody's world.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
In conversation with people, I find that we devote a
lot of energy to consuming content, and we devote a
lot of energy to the internal conversation within our own
head of where we stand on issues and who we're
going to support and who we're against and how much
(15:39):
we're against them. Important, no doubt, important should be done,
and sadly a lot of people don't do it. But
we are getting diminishing returns at some point because we
are consuming what would appear to be the same swirl
of information from the same echo chamber day in and
(16:00):
day out, which leads to a sense of frustration that
nothing's being done, just not. But part of that becomes
if it's what I talk about sixteen hours a day,
all day, every day, and all I ever think about,
then even one day of talking about it is interminable
because it's all I'm talking about. You have to have
(16:25):
some level of balance to make it. Soldiers in war
don't fight the war in the minute the battle is over,
repaired to their tents and talk about the war. They
make music, They write letters home, they compose poetry.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
They look at a.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Picture of their girl and pine for her in the
town they lived in. They send a letter to their
mom and tell her how much they loved her. They
might play cards and drink some whiskey. It's not because
the battle's not real and people aren't dying. It must
be won or we will lose. No, it's because of
the understanding that that is so all consuming that it
(17:03):
has to be turned off and recharged, and you have
to have a diversion from that engagement and a lot
of our And you know why you don't have a
diversion because the radio and the website and the TV
station can't afford for you to have a diversion. They
need to keep you plugged in the whole time. They
(17:25):
need to keep you so plugged in that you're worn down.
This trickle battery is catching on fire and not good.
It's overheating, burning everything down. So what do you do?
What do you do to find meaning in your day?
What do you do that at the end of it
(17:46):
you say, I did that? Ah yeah, because watching television news,
reading the websites of the headlines, that does not leave
you with a fear of fulfillment, satisfaction, completion, and accomplishment.
(18:08):
It may be necessary, but he does not do that.
So let me challenge you to find one thing today
that will leave you with that Philly example. There's a
business that you support, maybe a restaurant, may not. Maybe
a little distribution company, maybe a tire company or an
oil change company, or a muffler shop. But it's locally
(18:31):
owned and the owner is there on site, and you
like the service they provide or the product they build
for the few who still do Or maybe it's dun
fence company, or maybe it's the people who cut your grass.
Or maybe it's the people who painted your home or
(18:53):
the guy who takes care of your car. But it
could be a burger joint, could be a beer joint,
it could be most any small business you can imagine.
The point is not the product of the service. The
point is that their biggest challenge is getting enough people
in to serve and enough good employees to keep the
(19:16):
business afloat. And it's so much harder than you think.
You would be shocked what a difference you could make
if you go in and spend a dollar. Secondly, if
you ask the owners, Hey, what can I do to
help you? Guys? I want to spread the word. You
guys are wonderful. I wish more people knew about you.
(19:36):
You got a Facebook page, put up a post, simple
quick post. I had a great experience at this restaurant.
I encourage you to try it out. Now, go the
extra mile and you'll get a lot more bang for
your buck. Give the address, the cross street, the phone number,
and who to ask for because if somebody has the
(19:58):
more layers you put into getting someone to do what
you want them to do, the less likely you will
accomplish getting them to do what you wanted them to do.
If someone sends me, hey, you ought to watch this movie.
If when I'm flipping through movie ideas, that movie comes
up on the screen and I can hit play, then
(20:19):
I will. But I'm not going to go do the
research on all the movies that are just the name
of a movie. Why would I? But if you tell
what the movie's about, might catch my interest. If you
tell what the movie is about and put a link
to it, you're increasing the chances. I see salesmen do this.
(20:42):
I see people do this all day every day. Hey,
would you this was a great one. Hey, would you
mind calling my dad in having him on the show,
because this is his interesting thing that he did in
his life, and I think you would be fascinated by it.
Why not include his phone number and his name so
(21:03):
I can go look it up. Because people are lazy
or thoughtless. If your life depended on that business that
you've decided to show favor to today, then you would
do more than just post or tell one person he
was so and so Bob's down the corner is pretty good.
(21:23):
You would drive them there yourself, just like we do
for elections. That's how candidates win election. I tell you this,
if you've ever been involved with a campaign. It ain't
going to war, not even one one million of it.
But there is after the election a certain serotonin drop.
(21:43):
There is almost a sadness, a sense of loss, because
campaigns are all consuming, they're exciting, you're engaged in a battle.
Can't tell you how many warriors have told me that
they come back when a campaign is over, people who've
been in it, especially if you win. There's a sense
(22:07):
of exhaustion because now the race is running. But there's
almost a sadness because when you're in the middle of
a campaign, you wake up thinking about it and go
to sleep thinking about it. Your mind doesn't stray. You
are so locked in, you feel so alive. What if
you were to take that mentality today and say, you
(22:27):
know what I'm gonna do. I've got a grandson. I'm
eighty two years old. I might not be here in
a year or five. When my grandson is older. I
want him to know how much his papau loved him,
or his Mamma loved him. I'm going to sit down
right now while he's in school. I'm gonna write him
a letter that I'm going to present to him, and
(22:48):
I'm going to ask his mom if I can pick
him up at three, and I'm going to take him fishing,
and I'm gonna have the food ready and the whole deal.
Or I'm going to take him to the arcade, or
I'm going to take him to the BMX, bite whatever
he would love, and go make a memory. You will
never regret.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
That you did the.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
You've all heard of the reference to the slippery slope, right.
I was ready to report yesterday in a medical journal
that said that cigarettes are a gateway to the more
powerful drugs, and it's not. There are lots of There's
(23:34):
been lots of study of this over the years. But
one of the reasons they find that to be the case,
I'm sorry, not cigarettes marijuana is that it opens up
receptors to addiction. Now I don't believe that marijuana should
(23:57):
be illegal. You're free to disagree with me. You're free
to think I'm a horrible person. That's fine, and you're
free to think, well, the only thing is that because
he's a user, I'm not a user. I have tried it,
but it didn't do anything for me. I do like
bourbon and wine and beer, and there was a time
(24:18):
that the same mindset was in effect. With that, we
had prohibition in this country, might I remind you, And
it did not end well. In fact, our government, this
same United States government, during prohibition, one of their ways
to get people to stop drinking, which they couldn't seem
to be able to do, was they sent out poisoned
(24:40):
alcohol so that when people would consume the alcohol, they
would die. And that was supposed to spread fear in
the land that I don't want to drink that alcohol
or I'll die. But it didn't work. But the government
murdered people for their purposes. Wow, was that precursor? Was
(25:02):
that that should have been our wake up call to
stop trusting a government. And that was one hundred years ago.
The only thing that came out of that prohibition was NASCAR.
The mafia was more powerful than ever. You see, when
people want something bad enough, they'll go underground to get it.
(25:23):
You can't just say, can't just by legislative FIATCE say
not going to happen. But I have to ask you.
You know, when we talk about the slippery slopes of arguments,
if I were to ask you, let's take the pandemic,
(25:45):
what more could our government have done to punish us.
What more tyranny could they have visited upon us than
they did if we started with them doing nothing? How
far from there to the worst thing you can imagine
did we get? In Australia they locked people into prisons.
(26:09):
In China, they literally fastened the doors closed. You could
not escape. Can you imagine how claustrophobic you had to feel.
Can you imagine how mad you would have to go
in that rubber room. That's a torture palace. That's awful.
Our government may not have gone that far, but they
went pretty damn far. Do you remember the moms that
(26:33):
were out in the park because they lived in tiny
apartments and their kids were stir crazy, and the moms
needed a moment. These kids needed some fresh air, and
they took them out and they arrested them in front
of their children, mothers and fathers in front of their children.
You wouldn't believe that would happen in this country, but
it did. Go Look up the Tuskegee syphilis study. It's
(26:58):
a wonder black people trust the government to this day.
Go look at what they did to black people so
they could study syphilis, treating them like mice, like animals.
How quickly people have forgotten what our government has done
where our government has lied. Was fdr In any way
(27:22):
aware ahead of time or more of Pearl Harbor? I
don't know, but I'll tell you the people who said
that he was and allowed it to happen, because that
inspired the action that inspired us to get into the war,
that dragged us into the war. This idea of provoking
(27:45):
a clash, a shooting, a riot, a murder, this is
not new. You remember the little white punk in South
Carolina that went into a prayer group and as the
members of the church were holding his hand to pray
over him, he pulls out his gun and shoots all
of them. Do you remember why he did it? He
(28:09):
wanted to incite a race riot. The blacks would be
so angry over this that they'd start killing white people. So,
if you were the devil, what would you do that's
(28:32):
not currently being done? I send it to the Great
Paul Harvey.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
If I were the devil, If I were the devil,
if I were the prince of darkness, I'd want to
inbuil up the whole world in darkness, and I'd have
a third of its real estate and four bits of
its population. But I wouldn't be happy until I have
seized the ripest apple on the tree. The so I
(29:00):
set about, however necessary, to take over the United States.
I'd subvert the churches first. I'd begin with a campaign
of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would
whisper to you as I whispered to Eve, do as
you please. To the young, I would whisper that the
Bible is a myth. I would convince them that man
created God instead of the other way around. I would
(29:22):
confide that what's bad is good, and what's good is square,
and the old I would teach to pray after me
our father, which aren't in Washington. And then I'd get organized.
I'd educate authors in how to make the lowrid literature exciting,
so that anything else would appear dull and noninteresting. I'd
(29:43):
threatened TV with dirtier movies, and vice versa. I peddle
narcotics to whom I could. I'd sell alcohol to ladies
and gentlemen of distinction. I tranquilize the rest with pills.
If I were the devil, I'd soon have families at
war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, and nations
at war with themselves until each in its turn was consumed,
(30:07):
and with promises of higher ratings. I'd have mesmerizing media
fanning the flames. If I were the devil, I would
encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions,
just let those run wild until before you knew it.
You'd have to have drug snipping dogs and metal detectors
at every school house door. Within a decade, i'd have
(30:32):
prisons overflowing. I'd have judges promoting pornography. Soon I could
evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and
then from the houses of Congress and in his own churches.
I would substitute psychology for religion and deify science. I
would lure priests and pastures into misusing boys and girls
(30:52):
and church money. If I were the devil, I'd make
the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of
Christmas a bottle. If I were the devil, I'd take
from those who have and give to those who wanted,
until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
What will you bet?
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I couldn't get whole states to promote gambling as the
way to get rich, I would caution against extremes in
hard work, in patriotism, in moral conduct. I would convince
the young that marriage is old fashion, that swinging is
(31:32):
more fun, that what you see on TV is the
way to be. And thus I could undress you in public,
and I could lure you into bed with diseases for
which there is no cure. In other words, if I
were the devil, I'd just keep right on doing what
(31:53):
he's doing.