The Gunny Sounds Off On Firearms, Second Amendment And The Industry!
Like I said,,,,,I am a fan of the Gunny....-the Webmistress
From the January issue of Shooting Industry
He recently met with Shooting Industry’s editor, Russ Thurman, a retired Marine who also worked in Hollywood, primarily as a technical advisor for Vietnam movies.
Tell me about your tour of duty in the Corps.
I was a staff sergeant with 11 years in the Marine Corps, making $505 a month, when I got out. We weren’t well paid back in those days. I put in for warrant officer and was accepted, but I got hurt before I could get that done. C’est la vie. I had to find something else to do with my life. It just happened to work out pretty darn good.
Your big break came in Full Metal Jacket, based on the book The Short Timers.
I was lucky with Full Metal Jacket. When Stanley Kubrick (director) called me, that’s what they call being blessed. It opened every door in the world. He mentioned that Gustav Hasford’s The Short Timers was the book that the movie was based upon. It just so happened I had read The Short Timers and I was on my way through it again a second time. I found the book to be extremely entertaining. It pretty much captured the essence of the warrior. The Marine. You had Private Joker, Private Cowboy, T.H.E. Rock — it was entertaining, even though, technically, it was pretty loose.
It certainly established your signature as The Gunny.
Absolutely. No question about it; Full Metal Jacket was my fifth international film and it put me on the map. “Mail Call” is basically the motivator for my being at the SHOT Show. It is one of the highest-rated shows on the History Channel. When it started, it caught the eye of all the gunmakers. When Glock approached me, I was also approached by about half the gunmakers in America — all of them wanted me to represent their product. I said, “Well, ya know, I won’t represent something that I don’t use myself, number one, and some of these weapons I haven’t even tried out, so how can I tell somebody to go buy something I don’t know if I’d buy.”
So, I got handguns from everybody and shot them. I found which one I liked the best and the one I felt was the best weapon. That’s the people I decided to go with and it just happened to be Glock.
So, during your test and evaluation, Glock came out number one?
Why?
Well, number one, I’m an old traditional bastard. I like the 1911. But after you shoot about a hundred rounds through that old 1911, you feel it start to drag, you can feel it start to bind out. The material the Glock is made out of is almost like Teflon, it just repels the burnt powder, the black powder residue that everything else seems to glom onto.
The first Glock I got was the .45 GAP, and I don’t know whether
you’ve ever fired a .45 GAP, but it’s a round that’s half as large
as the old .45. The reason I think the military went to the 9mm is
because you can carry a lot more ammunition. But then, they lost the
concept of why in the hell a staff NCO or an officer is armed with a
sidearm in the first place. When you’re out of ammunition for that
M16, M14, M1 or whatever the case may be, and those rascals are
coming up over the berm, the pistol, it’s something you can shoot
these guys with and it’s a one-shot situation. You lay a .45 slug
right in the middle of somebody’s chest and they’re gonna stop. With
the 9mm, you gotta shoot them three or four times to get their
attention. Might as well have a .22 Magnum. I wish they’d pull their
heads out of their butts and start thinking about this. Even police
officers, why should a cop who’s being fired at put three rounds in
center mass before he stops this guy? One round’s all it takes for
the .45 and that guy’s not gonna feel like shooting at you anymore.
Were you familiar with firearms before you joined the Marines?
The Gunny:
I grew up in rural America. My father taught us gun safety and
what we should do. Nowadays, it’s gotten to the point where kids are 15
years old before they ever fire their first weapon. I was out pheasant
and duck hunting by myself with a 12-gauge single shot, old breakdown
shotgun when I was 8 years old.
Thurman:
What are your thoughts about the rights of people to be armed?
The Gunny:
I think if everybody was armed, there would be less crime. If
I’m a robber and I think you might have a gun, I’m gonna think twice
about approaching you or taking your car from you. We’ve got bold
criminals who will walk right up to your driver’s side window, point a
gun at you, tell you to get the hell out and jump into your car and
drive it away. I don’t think they’d be that bold if they thought, “This
guy might be armed.” We would weed out the nuts, the criminals, the drug
addicts, of course, and not issue them weapons. Supposedly, that’s what
our system does today. They have this ridiculous paperwork you have to
fill out every time you buy a handgun. It’s just totally ridiculous.
Thurman:
You’re not thrilled, I take it, about filling out paperwork.
The Gunny:
You know, the people who make these rules are such idiots. When
Glock sends me a new gun, I have to go down and fill out the same three
pieces of complicated paperwork every time. This is the age of
computers; they have all of my information on the computer. And why do
you have to wait 15 days? I have handguns at home two miles down the
road. So why do I have to come in and fill out this ridiculous paperwork
and wait 15 days before I can come pick my gun up?
Thurman:
You’ve often said paperwork is a deterrent to buying a firearm.
The Gunny:
It seems to me what they’re doing is making it so difficult for
people to own handguns. You finally say, well, that’s just too much
trouble, I’m just not going to do it anymore. The liberals in America
have taken it so far to the left that it gets sick. Another rule we have
in California is, you can go over to the used handgun section and buy 20
handguns and take them home in 15 days. However, you can only buy one
new handgun per month. Who was the brilliant bastard who actually came
up with that rule? I understand why there should be a 15-day waiting
period for somebody who doesn’t own 20 or 30 handguns already, and I can
understand the cooling-off period situation. However, when they’ve got
you in the computer, why do you have to repetitiously fill out these
things just so you can pick up a handgun every 30 days? It’s just out of
control.
Thurman:
What’s your favorite gun shop?
The Gunny:
My favorite gun shop, well, let’s see, High Desert Storm (Palmdale, Calif.), they always have what I want. They always have a good selection of used handguns, plus long rifles, ammunition and any ammo that I want. When I go into a gun shop, I pretty much know what I want to buy. Now if there’s new ammo that’s out that I might want to look into, I’ll ask, “Oh, what’s this?” and I might ask that to be explained to me. Good people run gun shops. They’re grassroots America people, they’re people I admire. They’re my kind of people.
Basically what gun dealers are doing is what we need to have done: You’re selling weapons to the good guys. Let’s face it, the guy that’s out robbing liquor stores and the guy that’s in the gang that’s out robbing people on the street, he didn’t buy his gun from a gun shop. He got his gun on the street from somebody who stole it.
Thurman:
You’ve often spoken highly of Charlton Heston as someone you
admire.
The Gunny:
Charlton Heston, God bless his soul, he stepped up to the plate a number
of years ago and kept everything going, kept this Second Amendment we
have going, and it’s the important thing. Why was that even put into the
Constitution to begin with? We have to stop and think about it. Our
forefathers saw a need to put that in there simply because they figured
that one day, our government’s gonna get so screwed up we might need to
take up arms and overthrow the government again. Take over and
reestablish our beliefs as Americans. When that day comes, if we don’t
have a rifle, how are we gonna take up arms? We’d be, basically, slaves.
Thurman: If you had a chance to talk to the entire industry, what would you say?
The Gunny:One thing the industry needs to do is not be discouraged by all the paperwork and red tape. It seems like liberals, the far left, these people are not good common sense people and they create this paperwork. They all believe in what they’re doing so strongly, they want to be in government. So the liberals, the extremely hard-core left liberals, really do influence this industry.
Just keep the faith. Obey the gun rules by all means. If your state says
15-day waiting period, then it’s a 15-day waiting period. We don’t have
to like that, but there’s a democratic way we can change that and we can
overcome that deal. I know the government is watching, and really
scrutinizing gun shop owners. So what do we do? We gotta go by the
letter, go by the rules and make sure there is no stone unturned and we
do it properly.
The Gunny:
We have to just bear with it, put up with it until better days come. We’re making it. I still have my guns, you have your guns. We still have ranges where we can go out and shoot. I think firearms, it’s our natural heritage and our right to own firearms. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of in saying you’re a firearms dealer or owner or manufacturer. The bad guys get their guns from someplace else, they don’t get them from us. They don’t get them from the honest people of America who run gun shops.
Yeah, just keep the faith. Hang in there. I think it’s gonna get better before it gets worse, to tell you the truth.