826 Former Firearms Company Executive Ryan Busse
Stand Up! with Pete Dominick
Pete Dominick
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Ryan Busse is a former firearms executive who helped build one of the world’s most iconic gun companies, and was nominated multiple times by industry colleagues for the prestigious Shooting Industry Person of The Year Award. Busse is an environmental advocate who served in many leadership roles for conservation organizations, including as an advisor for the United States Senate Sportsmen’s Caucus and the Biden Presidential Campaign. He remains a proud outdoorsman, gun owner, father, and resident of Montana.
About the book....
A long-time former executive at one of the country’s top gun manufacturers reveals how his industry radicalized a large swathe of America, and explains how it must change before we can reduce gun violence and heal as a nation.
Ryan Busse has traveled a long, circuitous path along the American gun journey. As an avid hunter, outdoorsman, and conservationist–all things that the firearms industry was built on–he rose to the highest ranks of the rapidly growing, multibillion-dollar firearms industry.
But replacing self-imposed decency with rampant fear-mongering, racism, hardline conservative politics, massive profits from semi-automatic weapons sales, and McCarthyesque policing have driven Busse to do something few other gun executives have done: he’s ending his 30-year career in the industry to tell its secrets. He watched the industry change from its smaller, less corporate and far-less-powerful form to the partisan, power-hungry entity it is today. He thought he could go up against the power of the industry from within, and over the years had made small inroads toward sensible gun ownership and use. But that’s simply not possible anymore.
This book is an insider’s call-out, a voice-driven tale of personal transformation, and a fast ride through wild times and colorful characters that populate a much-speculated-about, but little-known industry. It’s also a story of how authoritarianism spreads in the guise of freedom, how voicing one’s conscience becomes an act of treason in a culture that demands sameness and loyalty.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wow, I can't believe that a network that's so opposed to gender affirming surgery just cut off their own dick. |
| 0:17.0 | But whatever the reason was, Tucker's firing is gonna leave a huge white power vacuum at Fox. |
| 0:24.0 | From a deep-abricated solar-powered garden shed in Rockland County, New York, USA, this is stand-up with Pete Dominick. |
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| 1:00.0 | Pete Dominick! |
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| 1:07.0 | You are looking great today. I mean, you are really looking good. You are something else. |
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| 1:27.0 | All right, hello. Welcome to the big program. Is it a big program? Is it a small program? It's a show. I produce it, book it, post it, and edit it, and then post it each and every day. |
| 1:39.0 | So the big program to me, that's for darn sure. Yesterday, I put out a special spectacular up in Anza, extravaganza in the afternoon or early evening with five great guests. |
| 1:52.0 | If you haven't listened to that somehow, if you missed, I talked to the great Ellie Mistyle, Jeff Jarvis, Danielle Moody, Jared Yeats, Sexton, and Juliet Jeskey. |
| 2:03.0 | All of whom had very interesting things to say in the wake of Fox News firing, Tucker Carlson, by the way, that was desi-litic at the Daily Show at the opening of the program. |
| 2:13.0 | And so go back and listen to that episode of the show. And today, I've got Ryan Bussey back on the program. Ryan, of course, is the former Fire Arms manufacturing company executive. |
| 2:26.0 | He worked at a company called Kimber, and he helped build it into one of the most iconic gun companies. He won all kinds of awards for that job. |
| 2:34.0 | But he basically came to it a very important point, decision in his life where he realized that they were doing the wrong thing. And he was a part of the problem. |
| 2:44.0 | So he became a part of the solution. He is the author of the great book gunfight, my battle against the industry that radicalized America, and he was just on the Daily Show. |
| 2:53.0 | He's been on that show. I think twice he's testified in front of the Senate. He has been interviewed by just about everybody. He's got district attorneys around the country calling him or attorneys general, I think he said, anyway, great conversation with Ryan Bussey on today's episode of Stand Up. |
| 3:08.0 | Skipping the news segment today because it's just going to take too long and I want to get this up for you early here in the morning. Yesterday, I was heavily focused on the extravaganza bananza just mentioned. |
| 3:19.0 | And it seems like it's dominating the news. Obviously on a day like that, there are so many other things that go undercover. So probably the best day for me to do the news, but scheduling wise, just can't make it work. |
| 3:30.0 | So I'll give you a very comprehensive segment on tomorrow's show in case you really missed it. But right now, my conversation with Ryan Bussey is what I've got for you here on a Tuesday, the 25th of April 2023. |
| 3:44.0 | I love talking to him, grateful to have him and for what he's done and been saying for over the past year. And of course, I can't have these conversations without your support. |
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