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April 20, 2026 12 mins

Josh Schirard from Byrna (the maker of the fantastic Byrna Launcher) joins Jack & Joe to discuss the virtues of their less-than-lethal self-defense option--The UnGun

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want you to back off, but I don't really
want to kill you. It's Armstrong and Getty extra large.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Because four hours simply this is Armstrong and Getty extra large.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Love my burn a gun, Absolutely love it.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Our topic less than lethal force and what it can
do for you. Josh Schirard joins us. Josh is the
director of Law Enforcement in Private Security at Burnet Technologies.
The burn A Launcher is a hell of an interesting project,
which will tell you a little bit more about Josh.
Your background is in law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Correct, sure is? Yeah, we're twenty two years am I
not supposed to call it a gun? You know, it's
we try to stay away from the whole firearms because
we want people to understand that it's it's definitely you know,
we joke and call it the unngun. You know, it's
really not a firearms. It's legal in so many other places.
You know, we try to separate a little bit, but

(00:53):
you know, the important things. People understand what it is,
what it can do, and so if that's what it takes,
then we're good with that.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
I'll tell you what, if I pull it on somebody,
I want them to think it's a gun. I don't
mind up and it looks like a gun.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
So why less than lethal force as opposed to a
gun for the average homeowner for instance.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
You know, if you look at law enforcement over the
last three four plus decades, less than lethal force has
been a big, you know, proponent of law enforcement and
a big part of how law enforcement, you know, goes
out there and protects themselves and protects the citizens. Well,
in the last ten to fifteen years, we've been seeing
the increase in importance and increase in prioritization of that

(01:34):
same kind of force force in the civilian usage. Look,
we have seen it timetime again all over the country.
This this increased scrutiny on a civilian, a random citizen
that really doesn't you know, know, has a basic understanding
of the law. But now they're responsible for using what
should be considered a reasonable amount of force when protecting themselves.
And we see it more and more now where they're

(01:56):
using an elevated amount of force and lethal force. And
then all of a sudden, you're seeing twenty years ago
something that would have been fine and something that would
have been legal, and all of a sudden, people are
getting in trouble. People are going to jail when they're using,
you know, an excessive amount of force to defend themselves.
And so that's why, especially lately, having good less lethal
force options has been so important, not just to protect yourself,

(02:19):
but to make sure that you're defending yourself in an
appropriate manner that keeps you out of jail.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Well, so I've got one, so I know what it is,
but explain what the Burna ungunn is. I mean, if
it's not lethal force, how does it stop a bad
guy from you know, ruining my night.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
So Burna makes a series of launchers, and that's the
best way to describe them. Basically, they're all CO two
air powered and they fire an encapsulated chemical projectile or
solid polymer balls. Now, these balls range in caliber from
sixty one to sixty eight, but they'll fire at about
four hundred feet per second, about two hundred miles an hour,
and if you do have the ones that have the

(02:55):
chemical agent in it, they explode on contact. Now, they
create an amazing amount of pain when they hit a target,
so you get a lot of pain compliance or a
lot of you know, uh, pain compliance, pain compliance out
of that. But then you get this three to five
foot cloud a chemical agent that explodes in that attacker's space,
which contains the same things that you'd find in both

(03:17):
pepper spray and then depending on the round in you know,
law enforcement military grade tear gas. So not only you
getting that direct impact, that pain, that buying a couple
seconds of them flinching, but now they're being completely incapacitated
by that chemical agent, which buys you the precious time
to escape, and most often they'll turn and run the

(03:37):
other way.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
So I remember talking about this a long time ago.
How a lot of folks who have and you know,
it's up to obviously anybody knows us knows that you
do what you want to do, You do what you
think is right, and we don't judge you either way.
But a lot of folks have a gun then God forbid,

(04:00):
So the moment comes to use it and they realize
I can't take a life. How often you know what
happens with that? What do you know about that?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
You know? I think that's a really really good point.
And through my career in law enforcement, I have unfortunately
met several people that have been carrying a gun for
a long time and that exact thing happened the time
came to use it, and that was the time that
they've had that decision, that that discussion with themselves to
say am I really prepared to use it? When that
should it should have been a discussion they had with
themselves before they started carrying it. And I think unfortunately

(04:31):
there are quite a few citizens at carry guns that
have that same you know, have failed to have that
same discussion. Now, look at Bernhard, myself included. We are
huge to A advocates, huge to A supporters. I still
carry a gun every day up in a cop for
twenty two years. Look, I'm one of those guys that
I'd rather have and not need and need not have.
But I'm also a statistics guy, you know, Especially being

(04:52):
out on the street for as long as I did,
I understood how often that I may be required to
use a gun as opposed to something else. And when
it comes down to it, here in the US, your
chance of having to use lethal force to defend yourself
is almost one in a million. It's about one in
eight hundred and fifty thousand is a chance every year
that you might have to defend yourself using lethal force.
Your chance of being a victim of violent crime here

(05:14):
in the US today is about one in two hundred
and seventy five, which means, yeah, those two hundred and
seventy five cases, the use of force less than lethal
force would be appropriate and would be considered reasonable. So
that's why it's so important that you have options in
your force plan that are not just lethal. Now, look,
I get it, you could be one of those one

(05:35):
in eight hundred and fifty thousand, but there's a much
greater chance you're those one in two hundred and seventy five,
and you want to be prepared and have options to
defend yourself when that time comes.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, and my nunchuck skills are not what they used
to be. So I like the idea of the.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Keep hitting yourself in the face for one time.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
So where am I allowed to carry my burna?

Speaker 2 (05:55):
The great part is BURNI is illegal in all fifty states,
so one of the biggest to have some force options
and so that you can do that. If you travel
a bunch, you don't have to worry about reciprocity. There's
no background checks, no permits are required, can travel freely.
It's even TSA approved and checked luggage.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Really, I didn't remember that wool.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Almost every week. I don't have to declare it as
a firearm. I don't have to keep it in some
convoluted manner like I would have pistols. So I throw
out my check luggage, I fly wherever I need to go,
and I know I have somebody to fill myself right
out of the gate, quite literally. So it's very, very easy.
We try to make it easy on everybody to have
good tools wherever they may go and make sure that

(06:36):
they're legal everywhere.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Wow. Interesting, So the four hundred feet per second is
that correct for the projectiles, the solid projectiles? How bad
does that hurt?

Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's a it's a pretty incredible amount of pain. Now
have you volunteered to be shot? When I've been shot
well over one hundred times, and a lot of that
has to it seems like more than you need to.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
I think you kind of like it a hundred times.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah. So, our law enforcement training is very scenario based,
and unfortunately, it doesn't matter how much protective gear you wear.
In every scenario, somebody's gonna find a little gap, somebody's
gonna find an unprotected piece, and you're gonna catch one.
So you know, unfortunately, I have experienced the brunt of that,
the horrible end of that. And I'll tell you it's

(07:23):
we get a lot of reports from law enforcement about
their usage. And I can't tell you how many times
I've heard from law enforcement, man, we had a non
compliant subject, We've pulled it out, we shot him. One time,
he dropped to the ground and he started screaming, I've
been shot. I've been shot. So they literally think they're
shot with a gun because they hear, you know, a report,
they hear the bang, and then they just feel an
incredible amount of pain. All of a sudden, they drop,

(07:44):
you know, problem solved, mission accomplished. That's exactly what we
want with a very minimum amount of force.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
You know, we glossed over the fact that Police Department's
law enforcement agencies across America are using the Burner launcher.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
How many you know, last count I had was about
eight hundred sees throughout the US. That's not including our
international partners. We have entire countries in Latin America, Central
South America, and Southeast Asia that are that are carrying
their law enforce of military carring this as well. So
it's it's incredibly reliable. It is being trusted by the
pros every single day to defend themselves in their communities.

(08:17):
And and that just speaks, you know, volumes as to
to how you know important it is, and how reliable
it is, and and and and how how great of
an option it gives, not only law enforcement, but you know,
the average civilian out there as well.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
I see you this situation I actually had out on
our farm when my wife was pregnant with our first kid.
This drunk idiot showed up and uh and he was
being all kinds of uh agitated and scary and everything
like that. All I had was either I'm going to
fight the guy or I got a real gun. And
so I didn't know if he was actual danger or
just a drunk idiot, which he turned out to be.

(08:51):
But burna would have been perfect for that can stop him.
But I have to kill him to keep him from
being you know, a problem.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
That's absolutely right. When you look at situations like that
and you start to have to guess, you know, what
is my best course of action? You start to really
sick and guess the ability to pull an actual gun
on somebody. Your your options become very very limited. And
let's be honest, you know the average person's ability to
fight their way through encounters like that is very, very low,

(09:20):
and unfortunately, I've just seen it time and time again
where more people get hurt doing that, and sometimes very critically.
So with a tool like Berna, it allows you a
very very wide breath of options when it comes to that.
I know would have been perfect and you get to
hit him directly with the rounds, or if you had
the chemical agent rounds, you could have even said, look,
I don't even want to start with a low level force.
Let me shoot the wall next to them, the ground

(09:42):
in front of him, and allow that chemical agent to
kind of envelop him, make it very uncomfortable, and guess what.
Most often he's just going to go the other one.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
I allowed to dance before I do that.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
You know, whatever you like classic Yeah, yeah, well, you
know back to your comment about fighting guys and my
really effective fighting days definitely behind me. But when you're
dealing with some junkie too, I mean they have you
ever as a cop on the street, did you ever
encounter one of those guys who are just so whacked
down on whatever that they had like superhuman strength, took

(10:13):
ten guys to bring them down?

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, all the time. Unfortunately, I worked in a very
very busy part that had a huge drug problem and
several other issues as well. So we're fighting people unfortunately
will keep very often, and that's exactly what would happen.
The great thing about the chemical incapacitation portion, it is
not pain based, So even if you're hopped up on
PCP bath salts, your body's still going to be affected

(10:35):
by that chemical agent when it gets exposed your skin,
your eyes, your neucoastal membranes, your throat. That reaction is
going to happen to those people, regardless of their current
state on narcotics and drugs. They may not feel pain,
but they can't see. They can it's very hard to breathe,
you know, they've gotten cucus running out of every orifice,
which makes them their ability to fight or their ability

(10:56):
to attack you extremely diminished. So regardless of their state
on narc that's where it becomes so important that you
have a tool that can incapacitate them, buy you time,
lets you get away.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
As a guy who has the burner, by the way,
just it's got that really quality feel to it, like
it's you know, it's it's just really really well made.
It's impressive.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
And it's important to note that our manufacturing facilities here
in Sport Wayne, Indiana. We're a made in America company.
Are parts of made in America. You know, we're employing jobs,
you know, here in the heart of American Indiana. Uh,
you know. So that's that's been really important to us,
especially through this journey of building such great tools and
building such great options, and to make sure that the

(11:35):
people that were behind it were were here in the
country and we're Americans.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Josh Sharrar, director of Law Enforcement and Private Security at
Burnett Technology. So, Josh, good to talk to you. Keep
up the good work. It's great product.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Hey, thanks for having me. Great talk. Our pleasure dance.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
You know, you shoot them right in the balls with
that pepper spray thing. You get the best of both
worlds because there's pain compliance. I mean even if then
an if they're opped up on something, then you got
the pepper spray element. Check your state whether the pepper
spray thing is legal.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Made in Indiana. Originally invented to keep Ohioan's out.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Oh I never turn your back on the Ohioan
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