Riding Shotgun With Charlie

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #078 LaKasha Robbins Massachusetts Women Gun Owners Gun Owners Action League The DC Project   It was sometime in 2018 when I met LaKasha. She was modeling for the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) Concealed Carry Fashion Show. I was the emcee. We were running into each other at 2A events put on by GOAL, The DC Project (DCP), and even trap shooting locally. Finally after about a year and a half of telling her she should be on the show, while we were sighting in some ARs recently, she agreed!  She’s been interviewed by Tom Gresham & Cam Edwards, this ought to be like shooting a .22!   LaKasha Robbins is a relatively new shooter and gun owner.  She’s had a license for several years, but things really started moving when she and some other female 2A activists in Massachusetts, started Mass Women Gun Owners (MWGO). She’s got some computer experience and organization skills, so she volunteered to help get materials and information out.  She and the others started the group just to exch

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #077 Dawn Hillyer Hiding Hilda   Dawn and I were both models at the concealed carry fashion show at Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in Chicago, 2018. I was modeling a holster undershirt.  I’m sure she was modeling one of her own products made by her company, Hiding Hilda. I told her that I wanted to do a show in every state and secretly she wanted to be my Indiana passenger. We made it happen in Fort Wayne, Indiana last month.    Dawn Hillyer, like many people, didn’t grow up around firearms or shooting. She got involved with firearms a year after a dating relationship ended and she was stalked for 6 years by her ex-boyfriend. There were death threats not just to her, but her family and friends, too. It kept escalating and escalating. The ex-boyfriend was very computer savvy and sent fake emails to himself making it look like she was going after him. She changed her phone number and email yet he still found and stalked her.     She had a bad feeling one evening and took her chi

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #076 Lauren Nelson This what one of the things I love about the 2A community is how easily we connect with others.  I met Patrick Collins in Phoenix.  He was able to connect me to Lauren Nelson when I asked about finding someone in Vermont to be on the show.    I met Lauren and we headed to her local gun shop in Wells River, VT, called Gateway Sports. They have a nice little shop that was recently redone inside.  While we were there, the store was busy with people looking to trade in some handguns, buying new handguns for some women, and even a few people with their young kids. Lauren shares a story about trading in a pink BB gun to buy her first gun at Gateway,too.    Lauren grew up south of Boston in a non-gun household.  She became interested in getting a handgun after she was married.  Her husband is mostly into long guns. Since they live in Vermont, they have their own range on their farm. They mostly shoot outdoors and usually in fair weather.   We get into how Vermont is a

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #075 Brooke Cheney A Great Start Shooting School The DC Project   I met Brooke Cheney at The DC Project dinner in Washington last summer.  Then we ran into each other again in Massachusetts at the Gun Owners Action League Concealed Carry Fashion show back in March. Of course, we kept in touch and with the current times, I needed to stay local for a show.  We did use some Leadslingers Hand Sanitizer, thanks for LeadslingersWhiskey.com, and headed out for a drive.    Brooke grew up and learned a little about firearms when she was a young girl. Her dad would load up a firearm and have her shoot them.  When she was dating her to-be-husband, they would go shooting, and he would load the firearm and have her shoot it. It wasn’t until after she had children, that she really needed to learn about firearms since they were going to be in the house.    Like many of us, after we take a safety course, we learn that we have more to learn. She learned that the course to get her license was just t

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #074 Mike Hughes & Britt Lentz Next Level Training   I met Mike & Britt at SHOT Show 2020 thanks to  Klint Macro & Matt Mallory from Meet The Pressers. They said they’re great guys from Next Level Training  and they needed to get in the stagecoach.  You may have seen Mike Hughes from History Channel’s Top Shot Season 3.    Before Next Level Training and SIRT pistols, Mike was a football player and a patent attorney who enjoyed competitive shooting. He spent a lot of time training and running his business, but having a family took over, and competitive shooting took a backseat.    The SIRT (Shot Indicating Resetting Trigger) pistol was Mike’s idea.  It took a lot of work, effort, and research to make the pistols and assembly them, which is all done in Washington state. They’ve got a number of types of pistols, like a GLCOK 17/22, S&W M&P, SIG P320, and a bolt for the AR 15 platform.    We did cover a little about the differences in intellectual property and funct

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #073  John Costa The Gunrunner LLC   When I called John Costa, owner of The Gunrunner LLC,  was on the phone with Glenn Beck. I read this story the day before about his gun store. I left my number and a couple hours later, we set up the time for an interview the next day.    During the breakout of COVID-19, many businesses and stores in Massachusetts were ordered to close. MA Governor Charlie Baker made a (vague) list of essential businesses.  President Trump eventually said that gun stores were essential businesses and should remain open. On March 31, Governor Baker included firearms retailers in the essential businesses.  Within hours, Governor Baker retracted firearms retailers on the list. Then Attorney General Maura Healey tweeted that gun stores were NOT essential and that gun owners were a danger to police officers, first responders, and domestic violence victims. The gun stores in Massachusetts would also not be on the list of businesses that could receive financial help fr

RSWC #072Mike OxDry Fire Training Cards Thanks to the Meet The Presser gents, Klint & Matt, for the use of their Vegas rental car! Attending a SHOT Show 2020 gathering is where I met Mike Ox.  He’s an instructor, author, and creator of the Dry Fire Training Cards. The Dry Fire Training Cards would be GREAT to have while the country is working through the virus of March 2020. “Ox” has been shooting since he was a young man.  After years of playing sports he got a number of concussions. When he was ‘no holds barred’ fighting in college, he learned to work with Olympic coaches on mental imagery and visualization and control his adrenaline response. Taking this training and combining it with firearm training, he ended up making a dry firing program for himself and it worked very quickly.  It became the Tactical Firearms Training Secrets book. He found out he was suffering with vertigo almost every night for 3 ½ years and learned about neurology and how to not have vertigo and keep doing IDPA Nationals. With s

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #071 Daniel Easterday Sued Deerfield, IL with IRSA & SAF   I was headed to Chicago for some family events. I had one morning to squeeze in a possible RSWC interview.  I messaged Rhonda Ezell and asked if she knew anyone who would be around that morning. She set me up with Daniel Easterday. She always comes thru!  Check out the Facebook LIVE video we did on the Riding Shotgun With Charlie Facebook page from Jan 26, 2020. https://www.facebook.com/RidingShotgunWithCharlie/videos/2425804361080948/   Daniel Easterday had a gunsmith as an uncle and started shooting as a kid. When he was older, he started to get into training. He learned that people aren’t as good they think they are with a firearm and he wanted to learn more.    After the Supreme Court decided that since Illinois was the last and only state to NOT allow it’s law abiding, background check passing citizens to be able to carry a concealed firearm outside their homes, they needed to change that. However, the anti-gun cr

Riding Shotgun With Charlie #070 Brian Harris Live Free Or Die Guys   In August 2015, Brian took a course from me to get his Utah & MA permits.  A month later, he was arguing with a woman he was dating. He took his clothes and headed out. After a verbal argument, she called the police. His girlfriend didn’t even know that he had a gun in his trunk.    They called Brian and asked him to come downstairs. Four police officers greeted him at the door with guns drawn waiting for him. They searched his vehicle and he said he had a firearm and a permit. It was unloaded, locked and secured. There was a temporary restraining order and the police confiscated the firearm. A year later when the restraining order was supposed to be dropped, the district attorney extended it. And pressed charges. He had to spend $13,000 to hire an attorney to fight his case for 2 years.    He was really being “red flagged” before “red flags” existed.   It seems like the district attorney was the one pushing to get Brian jailed. The DA