Billy Lassiter from The Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeartMedia Rally presents CEOs you Should Know, where we shine
a spotlight on decision makers from all corners of the Triangle,
showcasing the leaders and companies that drive our local economy.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to iHeartMedia Rally CEOs you Should Know. Today we're
joined by Billy Lassiter, Deputy Secretary of the Division of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. That's a long title. How
are you, sir?

Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm doing great.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
How about you? I'm doing so well. I appreciate you
being here. One of the things we do with CEOs
you Should Know is we take a moment to highlight
people who are doing really phenomenal things, not only in
the community, but in the corporate world as well. For you,
coming in nc SAFE is a very big initiative for
you guys, and I want to get to that. One
of the things we always try to do is I

(00:45):
fire off five or six quick icebreakers so people get
to know mister Billy Lassiter as well as they do
NC SAFE and some of the initiatives you guys are
working on. Is that okay, absolutely perfect, perfect perfect, all right?
First question, when you were ten years old, what did
you want.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
To be when I was ten years old, I think
I wanted to be a weather man.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
You want to be a meteorologist?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah? Absolutely. I adored the meteorologists that were on TV.
And my parents were in the in the farming business,
so weather it was an extremely important part of what
they did. So that that's how I started out thinking
about what I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
I love it so like did you ever work? And
like act like you were pointing to things on.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
The screen, had the green screen and everything.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
So before I for I joined iHeart, I was in
TV as well, and it was it was great to
see how smart some of these meteorologists are because you assume, oh,
they're just guessing at it, and there is the method
behind the madness, and sometimes they get it right, sometimes
they don't. But that's interesting coming from a farming background
for that to be so important to you on a
daily basis and a monthly basis, knowing is rain coming

(01:46):
and what's that it looks like for us? So well,
this summer, I think the meteorologists have been crazy. I
moved here about three years ago, and I feel like
there's been more rain this summer than any summer I've seen.
Am I wrong?

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah? We had a month where it didn't rain at all,
and then making the last couple of weeks, you've had
all the rain that we needed in the whole year.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
They're catching up. Okay, Icebreaker number two. Do you remember
the first concert you ever went to? If you do,
what do you remember about it?

Speaker 3 (02:11):
The first concert I ever went to was bon Jovi.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
It's a good one. Yeah, that's a way to start it.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Off in sixth grade and it was right after the
New Jersey album came out, and yeah, it was awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
That is peak bon Jovi time. So do you do
you still listen to bon Jovi?

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Moved on absolutely. So is it living on a prayer?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
What's what's the I love Living on the Prayer. I
love the whole Blaze of Glory album.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Okay, yeah, that's that's awesome. There's so many times we
have that question. People go, I don't remember my first concert.
I was like, I can vividly tell you my first concert,
as embarrassing as it was, was New Kids on the Block.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
With that was my wife's first concert, and.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
So my wife is a huge New Kids on the
Block fan. We actually went to see New Kids. They
were here Sunday night, so it was it's like a
nostalgia flashback for us. So but it's you know, music
to me is always one of those things and we
do it very well here I heart, but music is
one of those things that just takes you back to
an instant like that. I'm sure you can remember who
you went with and you know what song was played
last and all that stuff. So what is the greatest

(03:10):
vacation you've never taken that you would like to and why.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
I would love to go to Europe? Have not been yet.
And actually my daughter, who just graduated from high school
and is going to Carolina next year, is in Europe
right now. My brother is taking her as a graduation gift,
and I don't know how I couldn't get packed in
the suitcase or something to go on this European vacation
with her. But that is definitely one of the ones
I want to do, is go to Spain and Italy

(03:34):
in that area.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
So I've got I got a two part question. One,
I've never been to Europe. I would love to go
as well. People tell me it's phenomenal, So I don't
know how you didn't get included in that. But two
did I see, your daughter's gonna go to Carolina when you're.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
A state Yeah, no, I can't believe it. She's betrayed
the whole family. My wife's a State fan. We met
at State. Both my parents with the state, and so
for her to go to Carolina is definitely a betrayal.
But I'm very proud of her.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
So are you gonna get a powder blue?

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Suret I bought her one, but I don't think I
can buy myself one.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
I love, I've got kids. I've got a twenty three
year old, I've got eleven year old, a nine year old,
a five year old, And especially with the three younger ones,
the conversation is where are gonna go to school? And
especially since we moved here three years ago, it's like,
what's your school? Duecause at North Carolina is at State.
I was like, give us time, we'll figure it out.
Absolutely all right. You can invite three guests to your
dinner table, famous or not? Who are you bringing? Wow,

(04:30):
this is a tough one, I know. So you need
a couple of the seconds to think. Take your time.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah, well, I would love to meet Barack Obama. I think,
you know, being the first African American president in our
country and just kind of hearing his story would be
extremely interesting. I would love to meet Dj Burns, who
played for INC State and basketball last year, and Philip Rivers,
who was one of our famous quarterbacks from from NC State.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
So you're going sixty seven percent sports thirty three politician.
That's a good breakdown. Absolutely, which was trying out for
the summer team recently, like he.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Was playing pretty good. Actually did Philip a bunch of wait.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
I love going back and watching Philip Rivers highlights and
YouTube clips of him yelling at the defensive line and
things he did once he got to the NFL. So
I never got to see him at State, but that's hey,
that'll be a that'd be an interesting dinner. Absolutely, you
have secret service there to protect them, all right. This
is this is a polarizing question for some people. Which
is better North Carolina Mountains or North Carolina beaches?

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Wow, that is a tough one. So I love to
go to both, and my favorite is the mountains. I'm
a hiker. I've actually hiked half of the Applachan Trail.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
And so I did that right after college, and so
I love going to the mountains and doing hiking.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Have you done Grandfather Mound with the ladders and the ropes?
You have to play yourself.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
I have not done that. I have not done that yet.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
When I first moved here, I was like, yetta, go
do it. So I drove My family was still in Missouri.
I drove three hours to do that, and it was
I mean, there's times you've come over the top and
it's like a ladder down like thirty feet and you're like,
I'm with nobody, like something happens. I'm going to be
here for a while.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
So it's a great trail right next to that's called
rough Ridge. It gives you an awesome view of Grandfather Mountain,
but it's not quite as rigorous as that one.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Well that and as soon as I told my kids
about there, like how old do I have to be
to go? It's like at least once a month I
get a question from my now nine year old dad
how old do I have to before I can do it?
And I was like, let's aim for fifteen or sixteen.
It's tougher. But and then what would you consider your
favorite hobby? And then what is a hobby you would
like to start that you.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Haven't My favorite hobby is hiking. See yeah, absolutely, So
I'd love to hike and get outdoors, and I love
very I love kayaking, and we have a boat in
a place up at Lake gas And that we go
to and so really just love outdoor activities and so
I would love to learn how to wake board. I

(06:51):
can ski, I can do a slom ski, but I've
never learned how to actually do the wake board.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Okay, yeah, nice, nice. Yeah. It's amazing how the things
you've done in the past you either really want to
do or you don't want to do anymore.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
You know.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
I ran cross country in high school and I'll do
anything but run, just stay in shape. I just I
can't stand that we're doing sixty seven seventy miles of
running a week or My brother convinced me to do
something called the Mr three forty, which is a canoe
race from Kansas City to Saint Louis on the Missouri
River three hundred and forty miles. We bought a canoe
off of Craigslist, not a racing canoe, just a normal canoe.
Everybody else else racing canoes, and every year he's like,

(07:26):
you want to go do it again? I was like, no,
it was four grueling days with like two hours of sleep. Yeah,
barely finished. But all right, So now I want to
kind of talk a little bit about some of your
executive leadership and some of the things that you guys
are doing. As a leader of the Division of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention. How important is culture to you
and what does that mean to you and your team
and your organization.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
It's extremely important. You know. One of the things that
I tell people all the time that you can come
work in juvenile justice if you had the passion to
work for kids, and that's really what we're you know,
I can teach you everything else, but I can't not
teach you passion and caring and compassion for these young people,
the kids that we serve in juvenile justice or kids
that have made a bad mistake. In a lot of cases,

(08:08):
a lot of them come from really tough homes where
they don't have a lot of family support, and we
have to be the people that can stand in the
gap for those young people to make sure that they
get the services that they need to be successful. And
we are being successful with a lot of young people.
I think a lot of people think once a kid
gets in trouble, that their life is over and there's
no chance for these kids to be get their lives
turned around. And we do it every single day in

(08:30):
the state North Carolina. Our recidivism rate for kids that
come into the juvenal justice system, recidivism means that will
you get in trouble again, It's only about thirty percent,
and so seventy percent of those kids are not getting
back in trouble again. And even the thirty percent that
do get back in trouble, a lot of times, what
we find is that the crimes that they get in
trouble for are are smaller in the future, and so

(08:51):
you know, we're doing really hard work with young people.
We have a high vacancy rate right now in juvenile
justice and I think that's partly because of the pay
that our staff get across the satan North Carolina right now.
But we've done a lot to change that. In the
last year. The General Assembly has stepped up and really
has helped us get more pay for our young our
staff that are coming right into the system, and so

(09:12):
that's made a huge difference.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
That's great, and I think one thing you said that
kind of stuck with me like, we need to be
in that gap and help people. And I think so
many times, especially in society day, somebody makes a mistake
and we write them off forever. And I think, especially
at a young age, like you said, there's so much
chance for rebound and fixing that. And so again, you know,
one of my things was I used to coach an

(09:37):
AAU basketball team for seventeen under kids, and a lot
of that was focused around children who came from challenging backgrounds.
So my whole thing was like, listen, if we can
provide an opportunity for them to be successful and learn
good work habits and put them on the path, they
can get to college. They can get to those things
that maybe they've never even considered a possibility. And I
was very pleased in that time period to help fifteen

(09:59):
kids get college scholarships. And again, in the grand scheme
of things, you look at number like fifteen, you're like,
that's not big, But that's fifteen individual lives that I
had some small part in helping direct in the right direction.
So I'm very passionate about that. What is your leadership philosophy?

Speaker 3 (10:14):
My leadership philosophy is to embolden people to make decisions
on their own and to really try to make sure
that people have the skill sets and the knowledge that
they need to be successful in the jobs that they're
trying to do. So we encourage people to be intellectually
curious to go out and try to find more information.
I'm open to new ideas that people want to bring

(10:35):
forward to make sure that we can achieve better in
juvenile justice. But really I have an open door policy
that anybody can come in that has a good idea
that wants to present that idea to change kids' lives.
Because there's a lot of resource has been done on
what is successful and what is effective with kids. But
we also know that it's relationships that make the biggest difference,

(10:55):
and so we want people that are out there that
are going to have those relationships with kids, and I
don't want to have a policy or a procedure that
stands in the way of that relationship that can make
that relationship successful. So we constantly want to have that
conversation with our staff about what else can we do
to engage you in a process that's going to make
you be successful of young people?

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, yeah, that's great. What is the most single important
piece of advice you would give somebody interested in getting
the civil service of any kind.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
I think, I mean, you've got to be passionate about
what you're doing. If this is not something that you
care about on a daily basis, you're never gonna get
paid as much as people make in the private sector
in the public sector work. So it's got to be
a theory of I want to be a public servant.
What is being a public servant mean? That means that
you're willing to give of yourself to see a bigger
thing be achieved in our society. And it is a

(11:44):
great calling. I mean, if people are interested in changing
people's lives, really making sure that people have the things
that they need to be successful, that we have a
safe state of North Carolina, those are all things that
you can achieve in civil service.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, and absolutely, I think the passion behind it is
what's really important. So many times people go down career
paths for what they find to be maybe the wrong reasons.
Later on, I think there's a part of them that's
just empty if they're not helping or giving back. And
you know, we've had some CEOs in here, and we
had a recent one in here, and he actually broke
down in tears just talking about giving back and trying
to do things for other people and how blessed he

(12:20):
was to be part of that. And so, you know,
I think at some point everybody needs that, and the
fact if you can tie that into your career and
be part of your passion and your drive, that's phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Who did you learn from growing through your career and
have you had a mentor who instilled some lasting impressions.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
I've had several great mentors across my career, and so
I'll start out by saying, you know, I was interested
in being a weather man when I was ten, but
when I was in high school, I had a friend
that was shot at school, and that's really what drove
me towards wanting to work in juvenile justice and working
in public safety is trying to figure out how do
we stop this from happening in the future. And so
one of those first mentors that I had was the

(13:00):
director of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence
that started after that school shooting. Governor Hunt actually issued
an executive order at the time and created this new
center that was going to be focused on how do
we prevent school violence across the state of North Carolina,
and so doctor Pam Riley and Joey and McDaniel were
the first people that kind of led that center, and
I joined it as a as a high school student

(13:20):
because I was so passionate about trying to figure out
how do we change these dynamics moving forward so that
we do not have these types of incidents in the future.
And so those were two of my big mentors. They
taught me that, you know, public service is an extremely
important thing that you can do, and you've got to
be willing to give of yourself and make sacrifices to
make sure that you can make sure that the goals

(13:42):
of what you're trying to achieve are are capable.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
And I think everybody, like you said, has a story
or there's a reason why they got into it. And
knowing you know you're a little bit about your personal
story of where you came from and a kid who
was affected by that that can dramatically direct you in
the right direction. So I appreciate you sharing. Then, So
now let's talk a little bit about the whole reason
we're here. We're here to talk about NC safe. It

(14:06):
stands for Secure all firearms effectively. Can you kind of
walk me through NC safe as a whole. How would
you describe it to somebody who's never heard of this initiative?

Speaker 3 (14:15):
So NC safe is all about trying to teach people
that is really important that yes, you have a right
to possess a firearm in this country, but with that
right comes to an awesome responsibility to make sure that
that firearm doesn't end up in the wrong person's hands.
And so what we're trying to teach people is that
you need to make sure that that farm is securely
stored in your house, or if you take it into

(14:36):
your vehicle, that you have a place is safely stored
in that vehicle. The reason why you know, I got
interested in this, and the reason why we're focused on
this in juvenile justice is because what we've seen is
that we went from about fourteen hundred incidents of kids
carrying a gun that committed a crime in the state
North Carolina four years ago to last year forty five hundred.
That's almost a three hundred percent increase in the number

(14:58):
of kids that are committing crimes with and where are
these kids getting those guns from. They're not just going
into a store and buying them because they can't legally
do that, and so where they're getting them from are
either from their parents, their own homes, or they're stealing
them from other people. And what we're finding is that
that's occurring because people are not safely securing those firearms
in the save. In North Carolina last year, forty two

(15:19):
percent of all households that they had a gun they
possessed a gun in their household. Of those forty two
percent of households, fifty percent of them said they did
not safely store that firearm in their house. This is
a simple step that you can take to protect the
lives of your children, your community members, to make sure
that that gun does not get into the hands of
either a child or a felon that is not supposed

(15:40):
to possess a farm anymore. And so that's what this
campaign is really about, is trying to engage the public
in this conversation and make sure that they understand the
importance and the reason why we say that you need
to safely store farms in the state of North Carolina.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Well as anyways, you just stole my next stat I
stole it off of your guy's deck and I was like,
that's incredibly powerful that forty two percent, but half of
them are not towards safely And I mean when you
start looking at the large numbers, that's just off the
charts access And that was the part that was startling
to me.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, And just to add to that, we'd see guns
come on school campuses in the state North Carolina. Last year,
we had almost three hundred guns that were taking off
of kids on school campuses across the state North Carolina.
Of those kids that brought those firearms to school, almost
seventy percent of room brought them from their own home
that they got them from their parents that did not
lock up that fararm. If you believe that your child

(16:28):
doesn't know where your gun is and doesn't know how
to access that gun, you're wrong. You need to make
sure that you make sure that you prevent access to
that farm so that kid doesn't bring that gun to
school because think about the terrorization that that does to
a school campus, the kids, the staff, the parents, the administration,
everybody is terrorized to send their own child back to
school because that kid brought a gun to school. And

(16:48):
so that's what this campaign is really about, is making
sure that parents understand you have a responsibility to make
sure that that gun is not taken from your house
and terrorizes or harmed somebody in your community.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
So, from your guys perspective, is it purely educational? Are
you guys working with safe manufacturers to get rebates From
a tactical standpoint, how are you guys on the ground
helping people.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yes, So it is a public service awareness campaign that
we're doing. So we're doing commercials across the state of
North Carolina. We're doing billboards, we're doing bus wraps, we're
doing a social media campaign, so all of that as
part of it. But we're also having community events where
we're actually distributing gunlocks.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Got it.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
We've already distributed fifty thousand gunlocks across the state of
North Carolina. We just got sixty thousand more in with
the gunlock, we actually provide a postcard that shows people
how to use the gunlock. It has a QR code
on the postcard that takes you to a training video
that our highway patrolman actually shot that shows you how
to actually use that farm lock safely. And so we

(17:49):
are on the ground trying to get these resources out
to the community members There is no excuse for you
not to use a gunlock. If you can't afford it,
we'll get one to you, and you should take that
simple stup. It is like locking up putting your kid
in child safety seat in the back seat of your car.
We used to not do that when I was a kid.
I remember you rode in the back of the truck, right,
And so today we know that that saved lives and

(18:12):
we've decreased the number of kids that dived due to
motor vehicle accidents tremendously in this state. And last year,
gun desks actually surpassed motor vehicle deaths as the number
one killer of our young people in the state in
North Carolina. And so this is a reason that we
could do the same things that we did with motor
vehicles to make them safer, to now make our guns
safer in our homes so that we make sure that

(18:33):
our kids are not harmed by them.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
It's just essentially providing seat belts for guns.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
Community is incredibly important. I'm sure you guys have leaned
on a lot of different people across the community. For
somebody who's listening, how can they advocate, how can they
support nc safe.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
So the first thing they could do is go to
the website, which is ncsafe dot org, which is n
c sa FE dot org. All kinds of resources on
our website. You've got how to have a community event
in your area, So if you want to do it
at your PTA meeting or at your church or your
rotary club. It gives you a power point that you
can use and shows people exactly what to talk about

(19:09):
in those community events. So lots of good resources on there.
There's parent gods on there. So one of the questions
that we often get is my kids going over to
another kid's house tonight to spend the night. How do
I have the conversation with that parent about whether or
not they've secured their farm appropriately, and how do I
do that in a way that's not going to offend
them because this is a politically sensitive issue sometimes, And
so we've got resource gouds for parents about how do

(19:32):
you have that conversation in a way that's constructive, it
doesn't end up with you losing a friend over it.
And so we've got those parent gods. We've got gods
for pediatricians and law enforcement. So depending on what type
of skate career you're in. We've got different gods on
how to use and have this conversation with community members
across the state.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
I'm sure in this we talked about community. You've got
a lot of people doing this, and it's interesting you
talked about how to have that conversation. You know, year
old recently had a couple of friends over her are
both eleven years old, and and everyone went through my
head like do his parents want to have that conversation
or vice versa. But again, I think that's where the
education comes in, just how can I appropriately because the
first thing I would tell my wife is Okay, that's

(20:14):
gonna that's gonna rile some people up if we have
that conversation. So best practices on that that That's great
that people can check that out too, because I think
that is a way to broach something that can be
a polarizing conversation at this point, Who are important advocates,
whether it's you know, the gunlock manufacturers who are helping
or you guys are purchasing from, or or or state

(20:35):
government who's helping you guys? Who are some advocates who
are pushing for you guys.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
So we're trying to make this a definitely a targeted campaign.
The people that we're trying to target are gun owners, right,
because it doesn't do me any good to convince somebody
that doesn't own a gun to secure the gun safe.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
They're like, if I get one out, I'll think about
it absolutely.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
So we're working with hunting clubs, we're working with gun ranges,
We're working with gun shops, We're working with local law enforcement,
with our health departments all across the Satan North Carolina
is to distribute these gunlocks, but also to put up
posters and flyers in their gun shops and then their
gun ranges to make sure that people understand that this
is an important topic that they need to think through.

(21:11):
And so we've had a great collaboration with the Wildlife
Commission and doing hunting classes when they're doing them with
especially with young people, to have that conversation. I'm a
Scout leader myself, and so I teach young people all
the time how to safely use a firearm. And so
this is not a campaign about telling people they can't
have a fararm. This is a campaign about how do

(21:32):
you properly own that firearm and keep it safe in
your home.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, and it's a huge responsibility and absolutely you know
a lot of people. Also, what you learned is a
lot of people take care of things or or do
things as their parents did and it passed down to them.
And if maybe their parents were very cavalier about how
they protected their firearms, they may have that similar one.
So again, the only thing you guys can do is
obviously help to educate them. So what's the future And

(21:57):
we'll kind of wrap with this, what is the future
of NC safe look like? And what are some measurables
you guys are trying to achieve.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
So the big thing is one of the big measurables
is that we're trying to reduce that percentage of fifty
percent of households that do not safely secure their farms.
We love to bring that percentage way down and I
think with over time, we can convince people that that
is the right thing to do. I think the only
as you said, some people are cavalier about it, and
I think the cavalierness comes from their concern they bought

(22:25):
a gun in case they needed during an emergency if
someone broke into their home. And so there's all kinds
of new technology that's coming out that allows you to
use biometric safes, which is like a fingerprint or your
voice to open the safe. And so there's no reason
not to use that equipment now because you can access
that firearm still very quickly in your home if you
need to do that. So those are some of the

(22:46):
biggest measurable that we're looking for is trying to reduce
that number of households across the state in North Carolina
that do not safely secure that farm. And the other
thing that we're the future that we're trying to really
focus on this year is is vehicles, because we saw
that most of the farms that were sole inn last year,
we're stolen from vehicles, and most of those vehicles were
not even locked. We did a study right down the

(23:07):
road in Durham and almost three hundred guns over three
hundred guns were stolen from vehicles in Durham alone last year.
Of those from vehicles, sixty percent of the vehicles were
not even locked, So people were leaving the gun on
the front seat of their car and then not locking
their car. And so you've got to think for a
young juvenile that doesn't have a lot of money or resources,

(23:30):
that's one thousand dollars as you're just sitting on the
front seat of your car. And so we're focusing on
vehicle safety this year, making sure that we're putting up
posters and parking garages in those areas to remind people
that they needed to securely keep that farm in their
vehicle in a safe out of sight. And the other
fan that we're focused on this year's suicide prevention. So
what we're seeing is that a lot of young people

(23:52):
that commit suicide, but even adults that commit suicide are
doing that with guns that are not secured in the household.
The time that it takes you to get the gun out,
put the ammunition in it, to get the lock off
of it, that's the time that most people need to
reconsider whether or not they want to commit suicide. If
you can make someone pause for five minutes, most of

(24:12):
the time people will reconsider that. And the difference between
you know, someone committing suicide with a gun ninety five
percent of people that try to commit suicide with a
gun are successful versus every other means it's only about
fifty percent of the time. And so don't let that
thing that you bought to protect your family end up
being the thing that harms your family. And you can
do that by safely stored in in your house so

(24:33):
that a young person that may be in a depressed
mood for that one day something terrible happened to them
does not make an impulse of decision to harm themselves.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Well, Billy, I think this has been a great conversation.
I appreciate you guys carving out some time to come
and chat with us. You know, we got a chance
to learn a little bit about you, a little bit
about your leadership style, and then and then lastly about
the most important thing we're here to talk about is
how do we make firearms more safe? And I think
what you guys are doing is phenomenal, you know, an iHeart.

(25:04):
Let us know how we can continue to help support
you guys, because it is something that you know, we
need to be very passionate about. I'm very diligent on
so we appreciate you coming in. If you guys need
more information, you can find them at ncsafe dot org.
Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (25:16):
That's correct? Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Absolutely, we appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
We appreciate the partnership with iHeart.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Thank you, Ben CEOs You Should Know is a production
of iHeartMedia Raleigh. Thanks for listening.