April 26, 2024 • 15 mins
TheGunwriter.Substack.com is the home of Lee Williams. He is "the gun writer." Each month we discuss the stories in the news which have, or will have, the greatest impact on your 2nd Amendment rights. Today we discussed developments in the unthinkable raid on an Arkansas professional who was shot and killed during an improper (and unrecorded) raid and the story of a software developer and gunsmith hobbyist who is facing ten-to-eighteen years in one of the lates New York attacks on civil liberties.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Let's do this second hour of themorning show with Preston Scott Show fifty one
forty six. He's Grant Allen.I'm Preston, Friday, April twenty sixth.
Great to be with you, friends, ruminators, wherever however you listen
to us. Thank you so muchfor sharing time. We do our very
(00:36):
best to not let you down anddeliver things to you that you need to
know, and we bring guests thatwe think are worthy of your time.
And so we segue to a visitthat we do monthly. He's kind enough
to carve out time for us.He is the gun Writer. If you
go to the website Thegunwriter dot substackdot com, you will find the work
(00:57):
of Lee Williams. Lee, goodmorning, Welcome, good morning, how
are you doing. Thanks for theinvite. As always, Man, I
appreciate so much the work you're doingto stay vigilant and keep us vigilant as
it relates to our Second Amendment rights. And Lee, I got to tell
you what I thought was, Idon't know, how do you find something
(01:18):
encouraging in a case where someone losttheir life but all of a sudden,
things in Arkansas have taken a weirdalmost dark Turn tell us the latest.
Yeah, we reported. I thinkwe wrote five stories in total this month
on the March nineteen killing of BrianMelanowski. He was the airport executive director
(01:40):
there in Little Rock, and thefirst thing to come out was a statement
from his family which said what everybodyalready knew. He was defending himself.
He didn't know he was shooting atfederal agents. And his attorney said something
in that statement too that a lotof people have missed. I don't like
talking about what Brian was accused ofdoing by the ATF because he's not here
(02:00):
to defend himself. But let's sayfor a minute that he was guilty of
everything ATF said. Of selling firearmswithout a federal firearms license, he would
have gotten probation or probably some typeof diversion program pre trial diversion. He
never would have seen the inside ofa prison, brother, and that to
(02:23):
me is damning for that serious andfinger quotes of a crime. He was
shot and killed right after that.April seventeenth, the Attorney General of Arkansas,
Tim Griffin, demanded to see bodycamfootage from ATF. But then a
week later, the Senators Cotton andBoozman, a couple of Republicans from Arkansas,
(02:47):
but out of statement, they'd talkedto ATF and this is going to
be difficult for your listeners to believe. ATF agents when they hit the ome,
none of them were wearing body camps. There is no body cam footage.
Policy says they're supposed to have them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
And that type of encounter is exactlywhat bodycams were invented for. You're going
(03:09):
to go into a man's home andjudge has given you a warrant to violate
his Fourth Amendment rights. There's apossibility they were going to use for us,
and none of them wore a bodycam. The only video footage was from
that raid was from Brian's ring camera, which is about two seconds long,
right before an AHTF agent's covers thatcamera with a piece of tape. It's
(03:32):
shocking, it's stunning. They wentin there knowing full well that they didn't
have that serious of a charge.If they hit him with ten car loads
of agents and shot him in thehead. He died two days later.
Then, once he has spoken out, now the Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin
(03:55):
again his mum. He's suddenly Mum. I sent him fifteen questions man that
I wanted answers for his handler wouldn'tallow him to be interviewed. He said
he wasn't available for an interview ora video conference interview or an interview over
the phone, which is odd becauseI never told his handler when I wanted
(04:16):
to interview. I guess he's justnot available for me. The most important
question I sent him was whether ornot the Attorney General there had been in
contact with the US Attorney to maybetry and work out some type of moratorium
on these deadly ATF raids until thequestions could be answered on the March nineteenth
killing. But no, he didn'trespond to that. The Morning Show with
(04:40):
Preston Scott on News Radio one hundredpoint seven w FLA, We're trying to
make sense of it all. WebsiteThegunwriter dot substack dot com. The emails
are brilliant. You'll get them asarticles come out, which is usually once
(05:02):
or twice a week. And LeeWilliams, the writer is with us.
Lee the next steps from your perspectiveas a reporter, what are they?
I've got a story coming out probablyMonday on these ATF Special Response teams as
they call them, and we arecomparing them not to other federal law enforcement
(05:28):
agencies that have special response units andsome military special response units. And let
me just say this. You know, if you want to be a member
of the Secret Service Counter Assault Team, that's a ten week course. Their
sniper courses even longer. Bore Tax, the border patrols tactically inn of Bore
Tax, you know, the onethat took out that shooter down at Uvaldi
(05:50):
and the one that caught that fleet, that guy who escaped from prison.
Theirs is a massively long training course. And of course you've got Delta which
is six months long, Debrew whichis six months long, Marsk Marine Raiders
nine month program. How long doyou think atf Special Response Team training is.
Let me ask you a question.I would say, I mean,
(06:13):
you've set me up here, andthe way this is going tells me it's
less than a month. Two weeks, bro, That's what I was going
to guess. Yep. Yeah.And they still call themselves operators when they're
done. They call themselves operators intheir literature that describes these unit. Let
me tell you they're not operators.Operators use worse with surgical precision. These
(06:34):
guys bootdoors and shoot homeowners in thehead. So we're taking a hard look
at this unit. It's leadership,it's selection, it's training, it's weapons
to get the get it out there. This unit scares me. Preston the
fact that they're out there and youknow they target. God forbid, a
law biding gun owner sells a firearmeasy to get on their radar, is
(06:57):
what I'm saying. And just justto put some context to this story,
the guy who's running this airport,he's a he's he's just a he sells
guns how often? I mean,what do we know about his gun selling.
He's fifty three years old, hemakes two hundred and fifty thousand.
He made two hundred and fifty thousanddollars a year at the airport. He
would go to gun shows and renttables and sell guns and coins. He's
(07:23):
a massive coin collector too. Ione of his customers called me and told
me that he had really helped himout getting him some coins. So you
see tables like this at every gunshow you go to. DW have a
couple of guns, doesn't have anFFL, will sell them. But you
know the way atf made him soundin their search for APPI David Is,
he's supplying guns to Isis and elCata. Not really the case here,
(07:46):
bro, and Arkansas law gives atremendous amount of freedom to people selling guns.
If I'm not mistaken. No,you're correct, one hundred percent.
You can. It's a private sale. You can sell a gun. But
ATF, of course, wants tochange the definition of gun dealers right now.
They've got more rules out there thatjust were published on this confusing crap
(08:13):
whether or not you need an FFL. It sounds like from some people who
have read it that if you sella gun for profit, you may you
may need to get an FFL.Of course, the Second Amendment Foundation for
which I work and all other programgroups are going to sue the hell out
of ATF and will win. It'sjust Biden and the people that handle him
(08:33):
flexing on gun owners again. Tellme this, Do you suspect that or
think that there's going to be afreedom of information request on your part to
try to get whether there was anycorrespondence between the United States Department of Justice
in any form and the Attorney Generalfor Arkansas. I never talk about what
(08:56):
I'm gonna foya usually. But yes, the problem with when you for a
ATF. I just got a responsethe other day from Damn near three years
ago. So they take their time. It's it's unfortunate they're not They're the
most opaque, they are non transparentat all, the most opaque federal law
enforcement agency. And I'm getting sickof even calling them a law enforcement agency
(09:18):
because federal law enforcement acis don't behavelike this at any At some point,
you got to think that some ofthese ATF agents have got to say,
guys, what we're doing is wrong. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I
mean, if you're an ATF agentright now and you're taking down doors and
going in with fully automatic M foursmade by Heckler and Cock and shooting homeowners
(09:41):
in the head who have not committedany crimes, no criminal record, you
know, you better take a lookin the mirror to decide whether or not
you're on the right team here.Yeah. I mean, we're talking about
a guy that had a professional jobthat they could go see anytime Monday through
Friday, right right What I wouldhave done, and you know, to
so many people, a lot oftechnical guys, you know, ring the
(10:03):
doorbell wait till he comes down andanswers it. He sees everybody there in
uniform or do a call out,call him on a cell phone, come
out with your hands up. Well, turn all the emergency lights on him.
They had ten vehicles there. Thisentire neighborhood would have been bathed in
red light. He would have knownit was the police. Instead they boot
the door, go in and shoothim. Railovation one final segment with Lee
(10:30):
Williams, the gun Writer and againthe website The gun Writer dot substack dot
com. Lee, I wanted toget your thoughts. We've talked about this
story. It's the story of asoftware engineer that ended up in a New
York courtroom, and his crime waslegally obtaining parts to guns and making his
(10:56):
own guns. He wasn't, Imean, he's never been convicted of any
crime. He's a software engineer orsomething. And now he's sitting Dexter Taylor's
sitting at Riker's waiting a sentence.Yeah, Dexter Taylor is a martyr in
my humble opinion. He discovered theworld of gunsmithing years ago and he enjoyed
doing it, and he was purchasingparts and components legally from various online companies.
(11:22):
I know a polymer eighty and eightypercent arms have sent me kits to
put together. Brother, it's agreat time. I enjoyed. I put
together two block clones, had thetime of my life. It took me
a lot longer than it should have, but it's fun. So, however,
a joint ATF NYPD task force discoveredthat he was buying these parts illegally,
may hit his home. He's chargedwith pretty much everything. Criminal possession
(11:48):
of a loaded weapon, four countsof third degree criminal possession of a weapon,
five counts of criminal possession of afirearm, second degree, blah blah
blah. So he gets convicted ofall this. Of course, he's sitting
in rikers. He'll be sentenced nextmonth. He's looking at ten to eighteen
years because his Second Amendment rights wereviolated. Like, you can't believe the
(12:11):
judge in this case actually said judgeabin a darkness said in an open courtroom,
do not bring the Second Amendment intothis courtroom. It doesn't exist here,
so you can't argue Second Amendment.This is New York Appeal much.
I mean, she's insane, she'sclearly insane. The Second Amendment. Shouldn't
(12:33):
your Second Amendment rights shouldn't be dependentupon your zip code. Illegal for him
there, not illegal for us herein the Free State of Florida. What's
so striking to me is not justthe conduct of the judge and how she
handled every part of the defense fromthe opening statements to the concluding statements,
interruptions, rulings that were just justridiculous. But the Supreme Court, Lee
(12:58):
correct me if I'm wrong. Didn'tthe Supreme Court just slap New York in
the face? Yeah? Yeah,absolutely. The Second Amendment Foundation is going
to the Supreme Court. We havebeen granted associary over Biden's and ATF Frame
and Receiver rule, which basically istheir goat what Joe Biden likes to call
(13:20):
ghost guns, and he wants tomake them all illegal. Americans have been
making firearms in their home legally sincebefore there was the United States of America.
And we're going to pound the hellout of ATF and the Biden Harris
administration because of this, because ofthis nonsense. But what's insulting to me,
Lee is New York Rifle and PistolAssociation versus Bruin. They prevailed the
(13:46):
United States Supreme Court. Want,I mean, they won. How is
this even happening. We're seeing inall these Blue states what I call post
Brewin tantrum laws, where they're makingdecisions and passing legislation knowing full well it's
unconstitutional and flies in the face ofthe Supreme Court's Bruin decision, but they
(14:07):
do it anyway because they know we'regoing to have to sue and we're going
to have to spend our members' money. Thank god, we have such good
members and Gun Owners of America andNRA and National Associating National Association Gun Rights
are going to spend all of theirmoney. It's law there, man.
They're trying to break us financially,but we're going to keep doing it.
Good for you, Lee, thankyou as always for the time. I
(14:30):
appreciate it very much, and we'llvisit again next month. Sounds great.
Thanks for the invite, brother,take care, Thank you, sir,
Lee Williams. He's the gun Writerand again the website is the gun Writer
dot substack dot com. Subscribe ifyou want to support the work awesome.
There's all kinds of organizations you cansupport. You've heard about the Active Engagement
(14:54):
on Second Amendment issues that Lee's involvedin, but his writing about this this
stuff is exceptional. You will notregret subscribing to that newsletter. The gun
Writer dot substack dot com, twentyseven minutes past the hour
Let's do this second hour of themorning show with Preston Scott Show fifty one
forty six. He's Grant Allen.I'm Preston, Friday, April twenty sixth.
Great to be with you, friends, ruminators, wherever however you listen
to us. Thank you so muchfor sharing time. We do our very
(00:36):
best to not let you down anddeliver things to you that you need to
know, and we bring guests thatwe think are worthy of your time.
And so we segue to a visitthat we do monthly. He's kind enough
to carve out time for us.He is the gun Writer. If you
go to the website Thegunwriter dot substackdot com, you will find the work
(00:57):
of Lee Williams. Lee, goodmorning, Welcome, good morning, how
are you doing. Thanks for theinvite. As always, Man, I
appreciate so much the work you're doingto stay vigilant and keep us vigilant as
it relates to our Second Amendment rights. And Lee, I got to tell
you what I thought was, Idon't know, how do you find something
(01:18):
encouraging in a case where someone losttheir life but all of a sudden,
things in Arkansas have taken a weirdalmost dark Turn tell us the latest.
Yeah, we reported. I thinkwe wrote five stories in total this month
on the March nineteen killing of BrianMelanowski. He was the airport executive director
(01:40):
there in Little Rock, and thefirst thing to come out was a statement
from his family which said what everybodyalready knew. He was defending himself.
He didn't know he was shooting atfederal agents. And his attorney said something
in that statement too that a lotof people have missed. I don't like
talking about what Brian was accused ofdoing by the ATF because he's not here
(02:00):
to defend himself. But let's sayfor a minute that he was guilty of
everything ATF said. Of selling firearmswithout a federal firearms license, he would
have gotten probation or probably some typeof diversion program pre trial diversion. He
never would have seen the inside ofa prison, brother, and that to
(02:23):
me is damning for that serious andfinger quotes of a crime. He was
shot and killed right after that.April seventeenth, the Attorney General of Arkansas,
Tim Griffin, demanded to see bodycamfootage from ATF. But then a
week later, the Senators Cotton andBoozman, a couple of Republicans from Arkansas,
(02:47):
but out of statement, they'd talkedto ATF and this is going to
be difficult for your listeners to believe. ATF agents when they hit the ome,
none of them were wearing body camps. There is no body cam footage.
Policy says they're supposed to have them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
And that type of encounter is exactlywhat bodycams were invented for. You're going
(03:09):
to go into a man's home andjudge has given you a warrant to violate
his Fourth Amendment rights. There's apossibility they were going to use for us,
and none of them wore a bodycam. The only video footage was from
that raid was from Brian's ring camera, which is about two seconds long,
right before an AHTF agent's covers thatcamera with a piece of tape. It's
(03:32):
shocking, it's stunning. They wentin there knowing full well that they didn't
have that serious of a charge.If they hit him with ten car loads
of agents and shot him in thehead. He died two days later.
Then, once he has spoken out, now the Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin
(03:55):
again his mum. He's suddenly Mum. I sent him fifteen questions man that
I wanted answers for his handler wouldn'tallow him to be interviewed. He said
he wasn't available for an interview ora video conference interview or an interview over
the phone, which is odd becauseI never told his handler when I wanted
(04:16):
to interview. I guess he's justnot available for me. The most important
question I sent him was whether ornot the Attorney General there had been in
contact with the US Attorney to maybetry and work out some type of moratorium
on these deadly ATF raids until thequestions could be answered on the March nineteenth
killing. But no, he didn'trespond to that. The Morning Show with
(04:40):
Preston Scott on News Radio one hundredpoint seven w FLA, We're trying to
make sense of it all. WebsiteThegunwriter dot substack dot com. The emails
are brilliant. You'll get them asarticles come out, which is usually once
(05:02):
or twice a week. And LeeWilliams, the writer is with us.
Lee the next steps from your perspectiveas a reporter, what are they?
I've got a story coming out probablyMonday on these ATF Special Response teams as
they call them, and we arecomparing them not to other federal law enforcement
(05:28):
agencies that have special response units andsome military special response units. And let
me just say this. You know, if you want to be a member
of the Secret Service Counter Assault Team, that's a ten week course. Their
sniper courses even longer. Bore Tax, the border patrols tactically inn of Bore
Tax, you know, the onethat took out that shooter down at Uvaldi
(05:50):
and the one that caught that fleet, that guy who escaped from prison.
Theirs is a massively long training course. And of course you've got Delta which
is six months long, Debrew whichis six months long, Marsk Marine Raiders
nine month program. How long doyou think atf Special Response Team training is.
Let me ask you a question.I would say, I mean,
(06:13):
you've set me up here, andthe way this is going tells me it's
less than a month. Two weeks, bro, That's what I was going
to guess. Yep. Yeah.And they still call themselves operators when they're
done. They call themselves operators intheir literature that describes these unit. Let
me tell you they're not operators.Operators use worse with surgical precision. These
(06:34):
guys bootdoors and shoot homeowners in thehead. So we're taking a hard look
at this unit. It's leadership,it's selection, it's training, it's weapons
to get the get it out there. This unit scares me. Preston the
fact that they're out there and youknow they target. God forbid, a
law biding gun owner sells a firearmeasy to get on their radar, is
(06:57):
what I'm saying. And just justto put some context to this story,
the guy who's running this airport,he's a he's he's just a he sells
guns how often? I mean,what do we know about his gun selling.
He's fifty three years old, hemakes two hundred and fifty thousand.
He made two hundred and fifty thousanddollars a year at the airport. He
would go to gun shows and renttables and sell guns and coins. He's
(07:23):
a massive coin collector too. Ione of his customers called me and told
me that he had really helped himout getting him some coins. So you
see tables like this at every gunshow you go to. DW have a
couple of guns, doesn't have anFFL, will sell them. But you
know the way atf made him soundin their search for APPI David Is,
he's supplying guns to Isis and elCata. Not really the case here,
(07:46):
bro, and Arkansas law gives atremendous amount of freedom to people selling guns.
If I'm not mistaken. No,you're correct, one hundred percent.
You can. It's a private sale. You can sell a gun. But
ATF, of course, wants tochange the definition of gun dealers right now.
They've got more rules out there thatjust were published on this confusing crap
(08:13):
whether or not you need an FFL. It sounds like from some people who
have read it that if you sella gun for profit, you may you
may need to get an FFL.Of course, the Second Amendment Foundation for
which I work and all other programgroups are going to sue the hell out
of ATF and will win. It'sjust Biden and the people that handle him
(08:33):
flexing on gun owners again. Tellme this, Do you suspect that or
think that there's going to be afreedom of information request on your part to
try to get whether there was anycorrespondence between the United States Department of Justice
in any form and the Attorney Generalfor Arkansas. I never talk about what
(08:56):
I'm gonna foya usually. But yes, the problem with when you for a
ATF. I just got a responsethe other day from Damn near three years
ago. So they take their time. It's it's unfortunate they're not They're the
most opaque, they are non transparentat all, the most opaque federal law
enforcement agency. And I'm getting sickof even calling them a law enforcement agency
(09:18):
because federal law enforcement acis don't behavelike this at any At some point,
you got to think that some ofthese ATF agents have got to say,
guys, what we're doing is wrong. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I
mean, if you're an ATF agentright now and you're taking down doors and
going in with fully automatic M foursmade by Heckler and Cock and shooting homeowners
(09:41):
in the head who have not committedany crimes, no criminal record, you
know, you better take a lookin the mirror to decide whether or not
you're on the right team here.Yeah. I mean, we're talking about
a guy that had a professional jobthat they could go see anytime Monday through
Friday, right right What I wouldhave done, and you know, to
so many people, a lot oftechnical guys, you know, ring the
(10:03):
doorbell wait till he comes down andanswers it. He sees everybody there in
uniform or do a call out,call him on a cell phone, come
out with your hands up. Well, turn all the emergency lights on him.
They had ten vehicles there. Thisentire neighborhood would have been bathed in
red light. He would have knownit was the police. Instead they boot
the door, go in and shoothim. Railovation one final segment with Lee
(10:30):
Williams, the gun Writer and againthe website The gun Writer dot substack dot
com. Lee, I wanted toget your thoughts. We've talked about this
story. It's the story of asoftware engineer that ended up in a New
York courtroom, and his crime waslegally obtaining parts to guns and making his
(10:56):
own guns. He wasn't, Imean, he's never been convicted of any
crime. He's a software engineer orsomething. And now he's sitting Dexter Taylor's
sitting at Riker's waiting a sentence.Yeah, Dexter Taylor is a martyr in
my humble opinion. He discovered theworld of gunsmithing years ago and he enjoyed
doing it, and he was purchasingparts and components legally from various online companies.
(11:22):
I know a polymer eighty and eightypercent arms have sent me kits to
put together. Brother, it's agreat time. I enjoyed. I put
together two block clones, had thetime of my life. It took me
a lot longer than it should have, but it's fun. So, however,
a joint ATF NYPD task force discoveredthat he was buying these parts illegally,
may hit his home. He's chargedwith pretty much everything. Criminal possession
(11:48):
of a loaded weapon, four countsof third degree criminal possession of a weapon,
five counts of criminal possession of afirearm, second degree, blah blah
blah. So he gets convicted ofall this. Of course, he's sitting
in rikers. He'll be sentenced nextmonth. He's looking at ten to eighteen
years because his Second Amendment rights wereviolated. Like, you can't believe the
(12:11):
judge in this case actually said judgeabin a darkness said in an open courtroom,
do not bring the Second Amendment intothis courtroom. It doesn't exist here,
so you can't argue Second Amendment.This is New York Appeal much.
I mean, she's insane, she'sclearly insane. The Second Amendment. Shouldn't
(12:33):
your Second Amendment rights shouldn't be dependentupon your zip code. Illegal for him
there, not illegal for us herein the Free State of Florida. What's
so striking to me is not justthe conduct of the judge and how she
handled every part of the defense fromthe opening statements to the concluding statements,
interruptions, rulings that were just justridiculous. But the Supreme Court, Lee
(12:58):
correct me if I'm wrong. Didn'tthe Supreme Court just slap New York in
the face? Yeah? Yeah,absolutely. The Second Amendment Foundation is going
to the Supreme Court. We havebeen granted associary over Biden's and ATF Frame
and Receiver rule, which basically istheir goat what Joe Biden likes to call
(13:20):
ghost guns, and he wants tomake them all illegal. Americans have been
making firearms in their home legally sincebefore there was the United States of America.
And we're going to pound the hellout of ATF and the Biden Harris
administration because of this, because ofthis nonsense. But what's insulting to me,
Lee is New York Rifle and PistolAssociation versus Bruin. They prevailed the
(13:46):
United States Supreme Court. Want,I mean, they won. How is
this even happening. We're seeing inall these Blue states what I call post
Brewin tantrum laws, where they're makingdecisions and passing legislation knowing full well it's
unconstitutional and flies in the face ofthe Supreme Court's Bruin decision, but they
(14:07):
do it anyway because they know we'regoing to have to sue and we're going
to have to spend our members' money. Thank god, we have such good
members and Gun Owners of America andNRA and National Associating National Association Gun Rights
are going to spend all of theirmoney. It's law there, man.
They're trying to break us financially,but we're going to keep doing it.
Good for you, Lee, thankyou as always for the time. I
(14:30):
appreciate it very much, and we'llvisit again next month. Sounds great.
Thanks for the invite, brother,take care, Thank you, sir,
Lee Williams. He's the gun Writerand again the website is the gun Writer
dot substack dot com. Subscribe ifyou want to support the work awesome.
There's all kinds of organizations you cansupport. You've heard about the Active Engagement
(14:54):
on Second Amendment issues that Lee's involvedin, but his writing about this this
stuff is exceptional. You will notregret subscribing to that newsletter. The gun
Writer dot substack dot com, twentyseven minutes past the hour
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