0:00 hello and welcome to people making money one of the way to wow shows and I'm Kevin bemel the your host and we're here every Wednesday at 10:00 a Pacific Time 1 pm eastern time which is relevant to Our Guest today Ben Inman um and um um Ben and I actually met um I was introduced to him uh through uh another of another guest of mine uh Michael's who was on um my Monday show trust and Estates weekly um and and Ben's um
0:38 primary business uh is as a uh an estate planning lawyer um but in talking um Ben mentioned he has um a a kind of a niche specialty in of all things Firearms Commerce and law and I I I think this is for me anyway um who lives in California where where the laws of firearms Commerce um are very very strict um I I I think this is an an interesting subject to tackle I mean we're not going to be getting into the politics of uh
1:15 you know gun control and that kind of stuff um we're really going to be talking about um how one you know deals in in the in the sale and purchase and and the owners ship of firearms and I think it's an important subject for us to learn about um especially because uh we we've we've seen firearm ownership continue to grow and grow and grow um especially over the last few years and um you know um I think it's important
1:52 that you know whether we we own firearms or not we know um how to deal with them properly and safely that was always what my dad taught me um my dad was a small arms instructor for many many many many years so I'm I'm I'm really pleased to to welcome you Ben to talk about um this this this subject and to uh you know help us really understand it better so so thanks for coming on the show thank you for inviting me on Kevin uh you know it's one of the things that I'm really excited to talk about which is why I
2:28 actually decided to add that as part of my practice is because you know I do have a passion for firearms my dad taught me to shoot when you know I got my first BB gun when I was six and all go go growing up hunting and then I joined the army when I was 19 before I graduated high school and um started you know and kept right on through it uh and so I've just incorporate as part of my practice once I became a lawyer yeah yeah you know it and I think you're you're maybe a little bit younger than I am but I think we came from a
3:05 generation of fathers who almost as kind of a right if passage expected their sons to um learn how to handle Firearms I know when I was in the Boy Scouts I was probably 11 years old um you know going to Scout camp and one of the highlights was going to you know the rifle range and learning how to fire um you know they were they were just you your basic 22 caliber you know Bol action rifles you know real simple weapons but um I know for me and all of my Scout Buddies the time we got to
3:41 spend on the Range was I mean it was just the Highlight you know of being at Scout camp right um and but it was great because you know we we had to make sure that everything we did everything safely and all of that and and uh so we were you know we were brought up with that and this was despite my mother's absolute of hor you know I totally understand that um dealing with that a bit myself my my wife feels similar to how your mom does and I got my two older boys who are 10 and eight went to Cub Scout camp last year and they got to do the BB guns and
4:18 you know they were very excited about doing that but uh you know Mom was less so excited yeah yeah I mean we we were not allowed to have any firearms in our house GR when I was growing up as a kid um and U I think the only thing my father liked about the divorce from my mother was that he could own firearms again so um but yeah you know and and as an adult um you know one of the activities I most enjoyed with my father was going to the range both indoor and outdoor he had some really you know beautiful Firearms he had a a lever
4:53 action Browning rifle that was just I it was a dream to you know to fire that that that weapon and uh um you know so so let I want to take you back a little bit though um before we get into the the real farm stuff and and um just so people understand a little bit about your background you mentioned um you know joining the Army before you um um you graduated high school so what what led you to decide to you know become become a service member join the military um you know as as a you know as
5:28 a teenager BAS basically right yeah um well for me there there was a couple things um one is so during my I was a senior in high school on September 11th 2001 and so in April of 2002 I started looking at um graduating from high school and that's when I joined the army um but you know I started looking at that had happened and then how I was going to pay for colle College I didn't come from a family that was going to be able to afford to pay for college so you
6:05 know there was a pretty good offer uh from Uncle Sam to join the Army and they would pay for college and you know it actually turned out even better than I initially thought because after that we got after I joined we got the post 911 GI Bill and all the benefits really increased substantially for Education after that so it really worked out phenomenally for my undergrad yeah that's interesting because I I I I joined the Navy essentially for the same reason because I was in Washington DC on
6:41 September 11th um I've told the story before but U I was with a group we were in the Capitol rotunda when the Pentagon got hit and that was um that was my you know rationale we were you're walking you know the streets of Washington DC and there's young National Guardsmen on the corner with you know 16s right you don't think this is not the United States of America I know so um yeah so that that's that's interesting so then you're you you know you're you're how long were you in the Army I served seven years in the New Hampshire Army National Guard oh okay Y and you you were
7:17 enlisted I take it then since you said you hadn't gone to College correct yeah I enlisted I started uh in the engineers I was an interior electrician um with the engineers when I started yeah so it you know it was a lot of it you know it was a lot of fun I learned a lot of things um it obviously wasn't all fun but you know there's a lot of times where it it it's just you know it it's it is service and it's it's tough um but I really appreciate the experience of
7:52 having gone through it even you know deploying to Afghanistan for a year and the experience of you know living in a combat zone for a year on the ground it you know it definitely impacted the way I view the world and how I understand things so it it really is you know all in all a great experience even though there were times that were extraordinarily tough yes yeah you know same with my Navy service I think that's pretty true of almost all service members so after seven years um what
8:27 what made you decide to um you know get out of the army and and sort of take the next steps of your life well I was at that point I was graduating from college uh I had already deployed once to Afghanistan but I had also deployed uh I deployed what three times uh in inside the United States there was two there were two floods that I got deployed for as well as an ice storm um so and then I had also got gotten called out for Katrina and to go
9:02 out to Katrina but I got turned around at the last minute because I was inline processing through and they were like nope stop we've got all the people who are going go back to your lives um so you know but you know it it was definitely a different time um because of the fast pace of deployments for National Guard you know I wasn't a full-time I wasn't a full-time Soldier and we got put on 4-Hour recall to be ready to go anywhere and you know having that and going through the experience of
9:37 deploying and seeing uh a lot of the other members of my unit coming back and probably more than half of them were divorced by the time we got back from that deployment and knowing that I didn't want to necessarily have that go through that with my family yeah you know and I I think for a lot of Americans they don't quite understand you know what is the National Guard they think n they hear National Guard but it's actually more like sort of State militia that then kind of gets activated I have a I have a a long-standing close
10:12 friend who was in the guard for um I think about 28 years he retired I think I believe it was last year um and in some ways it's a harder life than being in the Army itself because of the way you sort of bounce back and forth between civilian life and military life and and and the the sort of upheaval it causes um I found much more upheaval in my life as a reservist than I did as you an active duty service member so I'm wondering what what what what was what was your experience well I guess yeah
10:48 you yeah you did some active duty time right so I mean I only did active duty time while I was deployed so I got activated for you know whatever it was 16 months or something for to deploy to Afghanistan right so um but yeah I mean it so just to kind of Flesh that out a little bit so the National Guard there's three components of the United States Army there's the active component Reserve component and then the National Guard so we're kind of separated off and it is a little weird because there's kind of the two channels
11:25 for uh the chain of command there's the big army ch panel um that goes up to the president when you're on title 10 orders or deployed um and then there's but there's always the state on the backside because that's who you're actually connected to and all the promotions are dependent on back in your state so there's all there's you know it's not as straightforward as it is with the reserves or with the active Army of what your chain of command is because everybody's still kind of always looking back and being like well what did they
12:00 think about it there whether I get uh the next promotion is up to them it's not up to you right I just got to avoid not getting demoted by you right it's it's I mean there and there are some somewhat similar things like when we go on you know sort of temporary orders you know I mean to a certain extent it was it was you know like you said it like as long as I don't like majorly mess up I'm fine because it's really this guy over here who decides you know my fate so um yeah there a lot
12:37 of sort of um uh I don't want to call it politics per se but that sort of you know dual loyalty and such yeah exactly I mean memories I sometimes describe it you know it's just office politics to some degree about exactly you know how it all works and um not necessarily politics in the sense of like you know National politics right right exactly so so seven years you have your degree you you you um you know you lead you leave the National Guard and um um just what
13:13 what was your degree in this I assume it's a bachelor's degree right yeah I got a Bachelor's degree in political science so that it was not incredibly useful um but I had PL I had previously planned on my plan had been to once I graduated from college Go Active Army and become an officer um but because I had a pretty serious girlfriend at the time and wanted to eventually start a family and we were still at that point you know it's 2007 2008 excuse me we're you know still
13:49 very much in the war on terror Iraq is going on Afghanistan's going on heavily um and so there's no let up in sight of well what you know if I were to do that what's life really going to look like right um and then and then on top of that uh you know the financial crisis as as I'm graduating from college um and so my other background was in construction because I did that on the civilian side outside of uh outside of college I my uncle owned a construction company so I
14:25 worked for them and then in the Army I did Construction by that point I was a construction supervisor and uh you know there was there were no jobs in construction in addition to no you know there's never really jobs for political science Majors but you know there's you know jobs that just require a four-year degree you can usually get into them so there just was not a lot out there so I kind of looked around and tried to figure out what I could do um I had a girlfriend who was dead set on going to
15:01 law school and we visited a couple and um I got interested in uh National Security Law because I thought it would be a good fit with what I had done previously and have some exposure to that and some practical experience with you know how that actually looks on the ground as opposed to you know back in an office in DC so uh I thought that that would be the way to go and then uh I was able to get a job working for a domestic relations firm in Dober New
15:36 Hampshire while I was applying to law school so I got a little bit of experience there uh and kind of caught the trial bug seeing him go to court and doing all the court stuff and I eventually focused my Ed my education in law school on that oh okay yeah where'd you go to law school uh George Mason University now it's uh anonin Scalia School of Law right right wow okay so this is like big time law school yeah very cool so so now you're
16:11 you know you're you're out of law school and um what what is what does your career you know your early career look like um um so I got hired by the Arlington Commonwealth Attorneys Office which in Virginia is the prosecutor's office they handle everything from uh your ordinary traffic cases all the way up to capital murder um so getting to go in there and getting to get the experience in you know a large County that had you know 700,000 I know out by you maybe that's not that huge but that
16:47 you know generally speaking 700,000 people in a county is pretty big um and it was a great experience tons of trial experience I got to try you know literally hundreds of cases the best I can do is estimate on like to that level uh because there were days when I might have tried four I think I tried five cases was the most I tried in a single day in a single day yeah wow bouncing from different courts um but you know they weren't they aren't all capital murder you still a lot of them are you
17:22 know much more pedestrian things some of them might be you know I might go try a traffic case and then have to do an assault and battery or whatever but it still keeping it all you know keeping it all straight you bouncing five different courtrooms I mean it's exactly wow so so that was great and then moved on and uh well actually maybe I should explain a little bit more how that fits into the Firearms law so one of my collateral duties while I was a prosecutor was Firearms so I was the one of the people who would review the applic for
17:59 Concealed Carry Permits uh I would be uh the person who would go in and represent the Commonwealth when it came to uh certain Firearms issues uh so in Virginia if you're convicted of a felony you know like most places you lose your civil rights uh in Virginia you can pretty easily get those rights restored except for your Firearms rights the Firearms rights they pull off and you have to go through a separate process you have to apply to the Circuit Court and you have to convince a judge that there's good cause to restore your
18:34 rights and so I would represent the Commonwealth's position in those cases and uh litigate those if they as they came up so uh they didn't come up all that frequently but you know I got to deal with some of the Firearms law there as well as uh I had been the uh liaison to the Virginia State Police and because they handled the applications for people who go in and try and uh purchase firearms well I shouldn't say applications the background check information um when the state police had
19:10 questions about something that was going on you know they might come in and ask me questions about uh an ongoing investigation into someone who whether or not they should be further investigated because perhaps they're a prohibited person meaning under the law there are certain people who are not allowed to own or possess Firearms such as convicted felons generally um and so we consult on those cases and help them in their investigations to see whether charges were warranted or whether it was even an unlawful purchase because
19:46 sometimes the records aren't 100% correct so it's just chasing down uh evidence to try and verify what had occurred so so so um a convicted felon loses his right to um possess a firearm is it does does the conviction have to be um you know relate to some kind of violent act or like if if someone is convicted of say you know felony fraud that would also um you know warrant um you know that restriction how
20:21 how broad is is the uh um you know is is is that restriction uh extraordinarily broad so it's so broad that isn't NE the felony thing is just shorthand so uh it's actually any crime that's punishable by more than a year in incarceration so that's a surprise to a lot of people because here in uh Northern Virginia we have a close by jurisdiction of Maryland which you can have a misdemeanor assault that could carry two years incarceration so being
20:59 convicted of that could cause you to lose your Firearms rights um but you know I don't know how much that actually gets enforced that way uh I've never seen it be enforced that way but it certainly is you know some things do fall through the cracks um I've litigated cases where so in addition to the felonies there's also anyone who's convicted of uh violence against a family member but there's kind of uh special specific definitions of how that
21:35 works and it varies um from jurisdiction to jurisdiction uh but under federal law they don't care what the actual charge is uh under federal law it only matters that there was a crime of VI misdemeanor uh either assault or battery and that the victim of that is you know a wife uh an ex-wife uh a child one of your children um and you know there's other people who are enumerated in that and it doesn't matter whether that's charged as
22:11 just an ordinary assault and battery or whether it's charged as uh what we term domestic assault and battery here in Virginia so and because there is under that other terminology a wider umbrella because anyone who could be a family or household member isn't necessarily this the definitions overlap but they're not the same so you could be convictive domestic assault and battery against a sibling but not be prohibited under federal law from owning or possessing firearms oh oh interesting
22:48 okay sort of weird wrinkles that show up I I mean event originally that was passed under the violence against women act and that's where it was coming from was to try and prevent the escalation of violence from domestic assault up to you know Murder with a firearm or you know attempted murder serious assaults so uh that's was kind of the thinking at the time originally although it is a bit broader than than that so and and does it apply to uh um for a wife who commits
23:24 violence against a husband yes so it so it really is just anybody convicted of uh crimes of violence against a domestic partner um oh okay interesting yeah so it it it is uh quite it can be broad but also can be narrow depending on the circumstances and you know I think there's quite a bit of misunderstanding on some of those finer points that I'm making there um even among you know
23:59 people who might otherwise know uh particularly law enforcement you know I litigated a case at one point involving a person who was convicted of a domestic assault against his brother trying to he wasn't prohibited from purchasing or uh possessing firearms but at the same time law enforcement probably was just going to see you know the way that shows up on a conviction sheet it just shows up as domestic domestic A and B and wanting to make sure that he wasn't
24:34 going to end up in handcuffs even though he was legally in possession of firearms and so we had litigated that issue um at actually we brought it in front of the circuit court on a uh we did an application for a concealed carry permit not that he was necessarily all that interested in it but it was a way to get it in front of a judge and now you've got the Commonwealth of Virginia having litigated a case that was decided by a judge on the other side and so you know felt pretty good about being able to make sure he's not going to get arrested
25:10 um when he shouldn't be right right wow um so and you mentioned that the law is actually much broader that it it really applies to anyone who um or any offense that has a year or more of jail time is it that the offense um has that as a a mandatory minimum is it the sentence that the person actually um receiv when they were found guilty how how is that how is that rule applied so it's based on the sentencing range so it's based on
25:45 whether you could be sentenced to more than a year incarceration for the charge okay so generally speaking misdemeanors are less than 12 months incarceration uh they're also typically incarceration in the jail as opposed to the State Penitentiary um Penitentiary tends to hold the longer term prisoners who are there on felony charges um and even um a lot of felonies given the amount of time they end up serving they actually just serve it in the jail it's only if they they're on longer term
26:21 because it takes a while to process them out and the cost of transporting people back and forth from there and uh you know it just doesn't necessarily make sense so um but people do want to get a lot of prisoners want to get transferred to prison if they're going to be there for a long time anyways because there are different programs that they might be able to reduce their sentences or do other things um that are beneficial to them so so at least in theory a crime could you could be eligible for up to say two or three years in prison but BEC
26:57 but the person is only sentenced to 9 months but that would still render them ineligible for uh possessing a firearm then huh yeah I mean you could see rather frequently so people convicted of a lot of felonies don't end up spending any time incarcerated you know other than processing time uh you know somebody who has no other record and is convicted of possessing a small amount of cocaine for instance or some other drug it's a felony but chance are they're going to end up in some form of probation um in Virginia you get a
27:34 suspended incarceration sentence that's how they handle probation so you know if you violate you're facing up to whatever they put for the suspended incarceration sentence so um you can't go above that but at the same time you can end up serving that entire time so it's a pretty big uh stick for trying to get people to go to drug treatment for instance when you're talking about drug cases uh the fear that they might actually have to go to jail for a while or prison right okay so
28:10 we we we've gotten off your career track a little bit sorry no no no no it's fine because I I you know I was asking the I was asking the questions but so so you you were with the um um the um Alexandria um Arlington comy Arlington okay and and so then um how did you go from there to Private Practice which is what you're doing now right and how did you go from being a prosecutor to being involved in uh Estate Planning and Trust in Estates and all that which is that seems really kind of a you know a weird
28:45 shift yeah um so one of the things that happened was I had a friend from law school who had a uh case that he said was going to go to jury trial in federal court in the eastern district of Virginia he felt sure it was going to a jury uh it was against the Department of Defense uh the defense security service and so he asked me if I wanted to come over and do a big Federal jury trial against DOD and you know the US attorney's office I was like you know I've tried a lot of cases but I've never
29:21 tried a federal jury trial like yes I wantan I want to come over and do that that sounds like a lot of fun um and so I I joined his firm and we tried that case and we won uh and it was great uh but ultimately I kind of figured out I don't really like practicing employment law um on the plan of side at least and so it got to be about covid time 2020 and we did the you remember there was supposed to be like the two week or three week crush the curve we're going
29:56 to just take a couple weeks off and I was like well everything's paused there's no court there's nothing like if I'm going to make the transition because I had been thinking about it for a while Now's the Time uh because part of it was also my personal finance journey I had gotten involved with uh Dave Ramsey's baby steps and so I had been paying off my debt and actually when I won that uh big jury trial against Department of Defense I paid off all my lawo debts and that was when I had paid off all the debts
30:31 that I had um and so you know once you get out of debt the next questions are well how do you start building wealth and then what do you do with it once you start building wealth and you know led me kind of interestingly to the estate planning aspect and I was I started getting more and more down the rabbit hole um with that and so it turned into something that you know is now what my firm does uh you know it's pretty much all I do is is trust in Estates practice
31:07 uh I do some business planning as well that goes kind of hand inand with that because it's really kind of one and the same thing but um you know I don't get too far down into the Weeds on corporate governance or anything like that that's not where I am but uh you know it is really awesome I'm enjoying it and you get get to work with some really great people and being out on your own I get to choose who I work with so when I if I find someone I don't want to work with I don't have to work with them you know different than working for somebody else you you know they pick the clients right
31:43 right I and we I've talked on several occasions on this show about you know starting a business and why would one do it and and what are the benefits and I think for people who have not been in any kind of entrepreneurial or business bus startup Venture and and starting your own Law Firm is certainly a business startup the the perception is well you know you're doing it to make more money and I'm not sure that that's really the case but what it does do is it gives you a a a kind of Freedom that that you don't have um when you're you know working for somebody else because
32:19 like you say they're they're dictating in large to a large extent the terms of your employment so yeah right and are you meeting your numbers like are you meeting your billable hours or however it is um you know that that that can be tough um the other thing that somebody had pointed out a while ago but I don't hear people talk about it too much is when you work for yourself there's also a level of security that you don't necessarily get working for someone else because the thing is most people think oh well you have less job security working for
32:55 yourself well no people are Co multiple people are coming to me from different places if I lose one of them I still have other places where I'm getting my money from whereas if you have an employer you're you know that's one it if you get fired there's your source of income you got to go try and find a brand new one so you know it really gives you a little bit more security I think overall so true and and it's it's so great to hear someone else articulate this because that's another point that I
33:31 all all you know always try to make is if you've got 10 clients and one of them decides to quit or you decide to fire that client okay so maybe you're losing you know 10% of your business or if they're a big client maybe it's even 20% but you still have the other 80 or 90% left whereas when you work for someone you essentially have one client and that if that client fires you that's it now your income is is zero and you're you're starting over again so I yeah I mean for with the exception of my time in the Navy I always worked for myself and I
34:06 always thought that that was a much more secure employment situation also because in in the end right My Success came from how hard I was willing to work how much you know how often I was willing to sort of you know get off my backside and do the marketing or whatever right it was it was really yeah you know much more in my hands um than if I worked for someone else so yeah and you get to create your own role to maximize your best attributes as opposed to oh well this is the role we want you in and you know we
34:41 don't you're gonna fit this role like you know you can only do so much if it the role doesn't fit who you are um and you get the opportunity to make that work in for yourself which is also something that's great you can play to your strengths and do your best to minimize your weaknesses whereas you could end up in the opposite working for somebody else uh if they want they have a need that you need to be somewhere um you know you've got to be there even if it's not what you're good at or what you choose to do right right right and when when it's your own practice or your own
35:16 business you can always hire someone to cover your weaknesses who has that as their strength right I mean that's that ideally that's what you know what we what we do and and um yeah it's so I mean it's it's like I said it's great to hear you know um that these you know these ideas um you know coming coming from another source so see see people I'm not crazy what I've been telling you all these years actually Bears out in Fruit so so what was what was it like um initially starting your own practice and
35:51 going from you know getting that paycheck to right you know um building up your your your clientele and all of that yeah it is scary you know you start out and there's not really a whole lot going on and you're hoping people are GNA hire you and you talk to people and you have good conversations it seems like it's going somewhere and then you hear nothing um and then you know it takes a little while and some of those people you hear back from and now then you get hired down the line um I I've
36:28 noticed that there's a lot of ups and downs uh when it comes to business there are times when it seems like nothing's going on and then you know I've had laws where I'm like I don't know like whether I'm going to have any more clients like I kind of get to the end of all the work that I have to do and look around and start worrying and um you know but they then you get it all happens at one time I don't know why it's almost like they're coordinated because you end up with from absolutely nothing to now
37:05 everybody wants to hire you all on the same day all the contract gets signed all the retainers get funded and now you're like how am I gonna get all this work done I you know maybe I promised these people deadlines over time that now like now there's everybody has the these tight deadlines you know so you go back and forth between the two of them sometimes right it's kind of feast or famine right yeah a bit a bit like that hopefully my goal is to try and smooth some of that out over time uhuh yeah I mean all I can tell you is in my
37:41 experience it does it does smooth out but it it takes a few years to sort of you know get it get it that way but uh but but yeah it does but uh you know life life is a roller coaster fundamentally right so yeah yeah definitely especially with having four kids it's just trying to balance that with everything else is is craziness sometimes and just just out of C you you mentioned your um the your girlfriend you said you know was dead set on going to law school is that the woman you married or no no her and I broke up um
38:19 but fortunately uh we broke up and I met my wife at Law School U at the beginning of law school we started out as friends and um you know started to become more than friends and we got married while I was still in law school um but you know it's you know law school is a very special place um and if you don't I think a lot of people show up there not realizing what lawyers actually do for a living yes I was a law clerk after I got out of college because my mother was working
38:55 for a lawyer and I I got out of college with an architecture degree at a time where there was a building recession basically and and so I thought about going to law school and so it gave me an opportunity to see what it was like to you know practice law before going to law school and yeah it's it's people see TV shows and they think this is what it's like and it's it's really not yeah exactly it's like an episode of Suits they think or you know no it it you know you're not making some Grand argument in front of the Supreme Court that's like you you're talking something really basic in a
39:33 local court and you know that's just the way it is it's gonna you know somebody's arbitrary grievance but they're really dead set on that's an important issue yes is much more likely to be part of your life as a lawyer yeah yeah exactly exactly so um so you started your own firm you're working trusts in Estates State planning and and how did you um bring the the Firearms aspect kind of back into your practice because now you're not representing um you know the
40:08 the the State anymore basically so um how how did that come back in well you know I had identified one of the areas that I thought would be helpful was to for me as in growing my business which was to kind of focus more on firearms stuff because of my background and so I had focused quite a bit of my marketing effort on that and I was thinking more initially along the lines of because I transitioned and didn't have much experience in estate planning is okay well you know I'll pick
40:44 up some criminal cases on the side or you know to you know while I'm making the transition that I can go try some you know criminal cases those aren't going to be too difficult for me you know I can pick and choose what I want um so I had decided that I was going to do that and I thought doing trying to make some contacts within the Firearms world and diff you know becoming affiliated with these different groups that maybe made referrals for criminal defense attorneys might be um for
41:20 particularly for self-defense shootings and things like that would be beneficial and so I did that and people started coming in but then because I was uh getting to be known as for firearms law I'd get other things too like people felons who had been convicted of who wanted to get their firearms rights restored might contact me and ask me if I could take their case and go litigate it yeah i' you know I've got experience in that I've probably done more of those than most other people you'll find in the area um I don't think it's a area of particular specialty because there's
41:56 just not that much work in it um but it was I started taking those and then I started adding in uh the Firearms trust and started to get to know more and more about the National Firearms Act and um the some of the other Firearms related acts that are out there so it really you know just kind of Blossom from there and I think it gives me some common ground with to talk about with other clients too because sometimes uh you know there's a lot of high net worth clients out there who maybe are
42:31 very much so into firearms and being able to have discussions with them about their firearms it tends to be one of those topics that if you're really into it you really want to talk about it so you know being able to kind of use that was another area that I had thought of you mentioned um the Firearms trust so what is what is what is that involved with or what does that entail so it can mean different things I tend to mean it for particularly for National
43:09 Firearms Act items so and National Firearms Act is usually referred to as NFA for shorthand um just because the acronym is much quicker to say but the the NFA has a particular wrinkle where in a trust is defined as a person and so the NFA regulates certain Firearms not based on ownership or possession but based on transfer and the taxes paid on
43:44 the transfer or uh also manufacturer because you can do that as well so um it operates over machine guns short rifles short barreled shotguns silencers uh what are termed any other weapons but any other weapon doesn't necessarily mean all other weapons it just means uh mostly disguised weapons so you think a cane gun like a cane that disguises a firearm or a desk that has a firearm built into it those would be any other
44:21 weapons or aows uh and those are all regulated under the National Firearms Act and when those get transferred there needs to be a $200 tax paid uh to ATF uh and that's how they regulate the transfer you can also manufacture items such as silencers people make their own silencers you just have to file the paperwork with ATF and get approved prior to making it as well as paying the tax so it's actually a tax law um which is weird for most people because they think about oh well if you were to
44:57 violate it it would be a felony and it would be but it's technically a a tax violation a tax felony um so um but you know there it it's very uh different because of the way the understanding was at the time that it was written thinking that perhaps there wasn't the Authority for the national government to be able to regulate Firearms directly due to the Second Amendment and so well we can make pass these tax laws and th those will be
45:32 different and it'll be such a high tax that nobody will be able to afford it you know it was a $200 tax back in 1934 I think it was and you know back then that was a lot of money you you know that $200 back then was a lot of money $200 today it you know it's not nothing but at the same time it's not $10,000 I think is what inflation adjusted that roughly translates to so um you know that was a big impediment at the time for people to be able to purchase those firearms and now it's
46:08 come down and uh Firearms technology has changed over that time too and so uh you end up with a lot of different things which is how there was recently the um big holoo about the um so there whether certain fire arms are short barreled rifles or merely what are typically called AR pistols um so you could have a pistol with a um with a shoulder brace it's not a stock and even though it may
46:43 look like uh a rifle with a short barrel and a short stock as long as you met certain parameters it was consider it's considered a pistol which is regulated differently from a short barreled rifle even though it you know functions the same as a full-size rifle or even a short barrel rifle so um so a couple minutes ago you used the term machine gun and I think from from my experience in talking to people about Firearms I think there's a um at least some misconception between you know machine
47:20 gun automatic rifle semi-automatic rifle right these are these are all not necessarily the same thing um and and talk talk to us about you know some of those designations and how how that plays into um firearm law and Firearm Commerce yeah so there's a lot of inconsistent terminology that you'll find here um because when we talk about machine guns under the National Firearms Act we actually mean any firearm that
47:55 expels more than one projectile per pull of the trigger or per activation of the trigger because there's also now the proliferation of what they call binary triggers so they fire both on the pull and on the release but those are not um generally considered machine guns but sometimes people get confused because they think oh well it's not an M60 uh or you know M249 um what we might call machine guns generally in the military although 249 was a squad automatic weapon but uh you
48:30 know those are kind of the thoughts whereas uh even an ordinary M16 A1 would be considered a machine gun because it was fully automatic or even the M16 A2 because it had the three round burst okay so a machine gun is a is a fully automatic weapon right and in general my understanding is civilians are not permitted to own um fully automatic weapons is is that is that correct or is that a misconception it's a bit of a misconception so you can as long as it
49:07 is compliant under uh under the NFA so how that works is it has one of the problems is it has to be manufactured prior to a certain date which I think is May of 1986 is when it became unlawful to manufacture further machine guns so the supply in May of 1986 is all the supply there is of machine guns currently so as they're destroyed or things happen to them where they're no longer capable of
49:42 being used um then the supply continues to shrink and eventually there'll be no Supply it's why you know currently if you wanted to purchase a machine gun it costs about $10,000 for even the most the cheapest machine gun you might be able to be able to find uh and you've got a follow through with the National Firearms Act requirements of filing with ATF to get permission to purchase it and pay the tax and then there's additional state requirements here in Virginia you've got to register with the Virginia State Police within 24 hours of taking
50:19 custody of a uh machine gun but and other states have similar requirements I think for you in California think they're it's just an allout ban which may be why uh you have a different understanding of how that works um so you know there there's a lot of variation there on the state level with machine guns and how they're regulated um but you the supply there's no new ones there coming on the onto the market at least at this point um so that's where that's where it sits but some
50:55 people have them um and you it's lawful to have them as long as they were properly possessed and registered um because sometimes people uh I don't know how often people are finding them still but you find people you know Granddad came back from World War Two with his Thompson and it's been sitting in a foot loer for you know at this point what 80 years 90 years uh so those can't be registered those are unlawful they can only be confiscated or destroyed um
51:31 oh yeah because you so it wasn't just they had to be manufactured before that date they also has to had to be registered before that date oh so yeah so if they're out there and they're unregistered it it prevents any additional ones from seeping in from overseas I suspect would be the thinking behind it you couldn't import them illegally and then say oh this has been here since World War II or whatever um so so even even though a weapon like that could presumably have historical value um and it might be something that
52:07 a museum would want um you couldn't turn it over to a museum or um the museum would be required to destroy it if you did or I don't think so I think that there it depends um I think generally the answer is yes if you were to turn it over over because it had some kind of historic significance to say like the one of the army military run uh museums it might be a little different I don't know how they're they're regulated but uh NFA only regulates Firearms not in
52:43 the possession of the United States government so even local governments have to comply with NFA they don't have to pay the tax but they do have to comply with you know we own this firearm uh with this serial number and this belongs to you know Arlington Police Department and they track as those are transferred around um so it it works a little it works a little bit different with the feds I don't know how specifically internally they decide to regulate those but it's not part of the National Firearms Act so they could
53:19 legally possess it but whether they'd actually want to I would suspect would they would not be interested oh okay interesting interesting and um so um you said that um you know basically after whatever the date was May 1986 they stopped manufacturing machine guns but is that solely for civilian purchase because I assume the federal government right the military is still buying you know machine guns right so correct yeah so that's that's only for civilian use uh even local
53:55 governments and St state governments can still purchase machine guns oh they can oh okay right it's only in the civilian Market that uh they're they're not no longer able to be produced so so this is an interesting wrinkle because civilian I mean uh Municipal governments are are subject to the NFA but yet they still can buy um you know new machine guns right so they're subject to the registration requirement not necessarily the other requirements I see just the federal government wants to know what
54:30 happens with all of the machine guns in the possession of you know other government enti entities okay and and and not to stray into politics but I am curious that would seem to fly in the face of the second amendment that that the government keeps a registry of of a certain type of weapons so um one would assume there's been you know challenges to those um and they've not been successful um what what what is the this this the situation with
55:05 that I'm not aware I mean there probably have been challenges I just haven't read the cases I'm not really conversent with how that ended up breaking down I mean we did see how that worked uh couple decades ago when they the federal government decided they were going to enlist local government to do the uh background checks for firearms purchases and Not only was it you can it was a command that they shall um and that was rejected by the Supreme Court and you know now it's been taken back over by
55:41 ATF but originally the background checks were supposed to be handled by local law enforcement we supposed to run those background checks for the uh for the firearms dealers okay okay but oh I'm s go ahead y you've seen more and more push back on some of these things from the Supreme Court whether it's that or the um gunfree school zones being overturned in the Supreme Court under Lopez versus United States and you know some of the more um some of the more recent cases including the New York
56:17 Rifle and Pistol Club where there's um you know saying that Pro blanket prohibitions on Firearms is not necessarily something that's um permissible under the Second Amendment so you we're still waiting to see how all that's going to shake out on what what's in there and what's heated um you know there's a lot of different things that it says and I have my personal opinion on where I think that's going um given some of these blanket prohibitions on where the carrying of firearms you know particularly all what is it all
56:53 buildings own where federal employees regul LLY work um you know seems a little over Brad because it includes bathrooms at na at National Parks um so you know it may be um that we'll see changes in that regard in the future but we we'll have to wait and see um whether that where Firearms can be prohibited um gets paired down significantly you know I would I would expect that it's going to remain in courthouses and prisons um some of the
57:29 other places where you know there's blanket prohibitions on Firearms is probably less likely to be able to stand um but you know it it it it's the way the law is now until we get a judge who decides otherwise right and it makes and it works its way through the the whole legal system yeah right um so for you know for someone who um doesn't own a firearm right now but is considering um becoming a firearm owner
58:05 and and by the way I I per it seems like anybody who's been in the military inevitably gets this question right should I get a firearm right um so I'm but I'm I'm I'm curious what are your thoughts um in terms of you know potentially and I'm not asking you to give legal advice per se but but you know for some someone who doesn't have a firearm but is thinking well maybe I need to get one for whatever self- protection whatever what what what what would you say to someone in in that situation I I I know what I say but I'm I'm curious to hear what you say I would recommend first off that
58:43 they try taking some classes to learn the basics uh you know the initial are usually starting off with some kind of safety class but then you know maybe moving forward into something where you get a little bit more experience but you're not necessarily off on your own um if you don't have any experience you know it I was lucky enough to grow up with a dad who had you know extensive experience in firearms and you know not everybody necessarily has that has a parent that's there that has that
59:18 knowledge um and you know it's just something you should seek out if that's really what you're interested in because you may decide that you know yeah this is this is really great I think it's important that everyone learned how to defend themselves um and have that ability but at the same time you know not everybody's cut out to do it uh and you should just be honest with yourself about whether you are someone who is responsible enough to have a firearm are you going to be dangerous with it to yourself and to others or are you going
59:55 to be able to be safe with it and protect yourself and your family uh if you can protect yourself and your family and responsibly store it I highly recommend that you consider getting a firearm because I think it's not just one of your constitutional rights I think it's actually an obligation as a citizen um that you be there to be able to protect yourself your loved ones and the country if necessary so that's I mean that's very similar to to what I say um there's you know and then I have my dad's test so he would he would say to
60:31 people um if um if a firearm is laying on the table and someone walks into your house and threatens you can you pick up that firearm point it at them and fire it without hesitating um and it's it's interesting because um some people say yes okay some people are like hm H like well so the then the answer is no um and now you're you know potentially it's it's more dangerous for you know for you to have that firearm if you're going to hesitate
61:07 use you know in using it because now you know the person who you know broke into your house or whatever maybe they didn't have a firearm but now they're going to right so so the situ worse worse right yeah yeah that that's that's definitely my thinking about it although you know I'm also open to the idea that perhaps you just haven't thought about it um you know I can and there's also differences between sitting here having a conversation with somebody and actually being in the
61:42 situation right like I can tell you that the first time when I was in Afghanistan loading magazines thinking that I'm you know go potentially going to a gunfight with this um you know is a heavy moment it's not you know it's not like it was all through training and all through the rest of my life and um similarly you know I use this story to explain to clients the idea of sometimes you know making the life and death death decisions for people because you know you you're picking people who are going to make your medical decisions and whether you know you should have life
62:18 support and people think about it flippantly sometimes and go oh well you know they'll just pull the plug they know I don't want to do it and I'm like no stop think about it for a second it's one thing to say you know with it's hard enough to make that decision for your spouse now imagine what it's going to be like for your kids to be sitting to be standing there in the hospital the grandkids are standing around crying you're in a hospital bed potentially dying and they're trying to make those life and death decisions that is not an easy situation and I highly recommend
62:55 that you leave detailed instructions on exactly what you want to have happen to relieve them of the guilt and burden that you could impose on them because you're not thinking through this and how that situation will play out in reality with a flipping oh well doesn't just pull the plug yeah yeah so so true you know there are I mean we sometimes I think we we miss the um emotional and spiritual dimensions of decisions that we make we we think of them as being just very sort of utilitarian um but but these these other
63:31 dimensions oftentimes are much more impactful I mean as a Chaplain in the military I I saw that all all the time um you know and um I remember a marine coming to see me and he was a he was with combat camera so his job he I mean he had a rifle when when they were going you know house to but his job was to take pictures to document whether they were successful or not and I think he was more traumatized doing that than he would have been doing the actual um you know combat work um because um he felt that
64:09 somehow um he was making their work more dangerous because you know since he wasn't actively there to support the mission um they had to protect him while at the same time pursuing the mission right so all these things play into it and it and it takes very careful thought to to Really parse through all those things so your point is very well made thank you I'm I'm glad you thought [Laughter] so well I'm I'm I'm looking at the time counter here we're actually a little bit
64:44 uh overtime so um unfortunately we're going to have to wrap it up here um but um it it I mean and there's there's so much more here that that we could talk about about but um really really appreciate you coming on and and sharing your story and and also all of your knowledge about this area um you're absolutely right I don't there I I don't think there are too many more there are too many people who are more experienced in this than you are based on your background um and uh it it occurs to me I think I need to um refer you to a
65:19 friend of mine who's a um he has a video forensic video company and he deals with a lot of this kind of stuff um and um I I I I I think um you two would would find a lot to uh to talk about because uh there definitely a lot of crossover there so so Ben thank you very very much for coming on on the show today thank you very much for inviting me it's been it's been a pleasure it was it was a good time it was a good conversation I'm super happy that you invited me thank you Kevin yeah you're welcome so I'm gonna have you hang tight for a minute while I wrap things up and then we can talk offline for a moment so
65:55 folks um thank you very much for joining us um if you have any questions um and especially if if you um you know if you if you need a a lawyer who um you know can deal with Firearms issues so I will put Ben's contact information in the show notes feel feel free to um reach out to to Ben um and if you have by the way um you know trust and Estates issues as well I'm sure he'd be happy to um you know help you with those as as well um I can tell you that one of my clients is actually going to be engaging Ben um um
66:33 Pro probably next week um so uh I was able to give him that news right before the show so um so I I I can I can you know endorse him from uh from that standpoint as well so um that's this is this is uh my last show for this week um we'll pick things up again next week on Monday at 10:00 a. Pacific time with trust and weekly and then you know the other shows during the week so I invite you to uh to to tune in again next week and in the meantime wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and a and a
67:08 great rest of the week and signing off as I always do Marie darling you are my bell all the best