Riding Shotgun With Charlie
Riding Shotgun With Charlie #202 Paul Kricher Artist & Author, Jim Cirillo’s Tales from the Stakeout Squad I’ve seen the book “Jim Cirillo’s Tales from the Stakeout Squad” online for years. It’s always been very expensive, often selling for $250. I saw that Alex Sansone, The Suited Shootist, () was suggesting that folks buy the book no matter the cost. Well, I started hunting for it. I found a copy at GunBroker for $30 with shipping. I messaged the seller asking if it was a pdf of the book. Well, I found gold! Paul Kirchner, the author, was selling the book on GunBroker....
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #201 Matt Mallory & Klint Macro Meet The Pressers It’s always a great time to run into Matt & Klint from Meet The Pressers. We filmed a show at SHOT in 2020. And they let me use their car to film a couple other shows. This year we were able to film another show on SHOT’s Range Day. Since our last show, Matt has been busy getting and giving training with , his training company. He offers several of the NRA and USCCA courses. But he is also a Master Instructor for Pepper Spray and for the TASER Civilian Course. He travels the country...
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #200 Michael Bane MichaelBane.tv Michael Bane. What can I say? I watched Michael for a long time as a new gun owner back on The Outdoor Channel on the shows Shooting Gallery and The Best Defense. I really enjoyed them and got a lot from The Best Defense! If I had a VHS player, I’m sure there are some tapes in storage. I met him at SHOT a couple years ago and asked for a selfie and he happily obliged. In November of 2022, Matt Mallory and I did a with him and I really had no idea about all of his history. Michael is an amazing storyteller so I just sat back...
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #199 Brad Landseadel Central Virginia Sporting Clays A trip to Central Virginia Sporting Clays last July led to another trip in October. I headed down to CVSC with good friends John Petrolino and Cam Edwards. On the first trip, we encountered Brad Landseadel, the owner. He’s a great guy and started telling us some jokes. We got to talking, telling him what we do. John wrote an . Cam suggested we should do this again. John said I should film a show with Brad. Brad suggested we do the show in one of his planes. On the trip in fall, I brought the GoPros and...
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #198 David Laird DSC Training & FASTER Saves Lives In the summer of 2021, I was fortunate to have taken a Level 1 course in Ohio. A number of friends and passengers of the show were there with me. David Laird was there, too, and he was nailing everything like it was nothing. Doing all the drills. Nailing the targets. Finishing before everyone else. It was impressive to say the least. I did interview him on that trip (RSWC #127). David was taking the FASTER course to see if it was something worth bringing back to Arizona. It was. David was a...
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #197 Erin Mihalik Throom Targets, CEO At the Great American Outdoor Show in 2022, I got to meet Erin. I was there with John Petrolino and we were in search of Tony Simon. Well, we were pretending we didn’t see Tony while he was behind us and we were talking smack about him. Erin wasn’t sure what we were up to, but she just went with it. That’s the kind of fun spirited person she is. We saw her again at GAOS in 2023 and she wanted to be on the show as things have been growing at Throom over the last year and she has lots to talk about! She starts...
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #196 Karise & Jerel Crew That Gun Talk I’ve been going to the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival at the Tommy Gun Warehouse in Greeley, PA, for about 5 years now. While I was hanging out in the VIP room with a friend, Karise Crew came in and sat across the room. I invited her to come join us. I’m glad I did. Karise and her husband, Jerel, are instructors in Philadelphia. They were speaking at the event, too. So after some talking with them, I thought it would be a great idea to have them in the stagecoach. I have to start out saying that I love...
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #195 Riley Bowman ConcealedCarry.com I met Riley in passing at SHOT Show a few years ago. We exchanged info and he said he would enjoy being on the show. On a trip to Denver, I reached out and messaged him and we were good to go. Then on the day I was heading there, I didn’t hear from him. I called Neil Weidner (RSWC #116) to double check the number. When I did get in touch with Riley, he wrote a text but didn’t come through. Regardless, it all worked out. I met him at the ConcealedCarry.com offices in Sheridan, CO. Riley grew up in...
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #194 Rob Campbell Eye On The Target Radio You have absolutely no idea when or where you’re going to meet your next best friend. I replied to a Facebook post about a radio show wanting to talk to instructors from every state. I replied because it was 2015 and I was teaching NRA courses in Massachusetts. I made two great friends during that show but I didn’t know it. In 2016, I was at the Gun Rights Policy Conference and I ran into Amanda Suffecool. She’s Rob Campbell’s sister. They were the radio show hosts I talked to. We became fast friends....
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Riding Shotgun With Charlie #193 Lenny Magill The GLOCK Store I’ve known about Lenny Magill probably since I started getting gun catalogs in the mail. I even have a VHS, yes VHS!, tape that he did back in 1993! Before I learned about the other instructors, I knew about Lenny Magill. Lenny now owns The GLOCK Store. But he started out selling advertisements on radio and tv. Back in 1893, he did some commercials and ads for a San Diego area gun store and instructor. The ads did well and lead to some other things.The more he got into firearms, the more he wanted to get...
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#183
Jim Shepherd
The Outdoor Wire, Publisher
At SHOT SHow 2023, I was in the media room with my good friend, The Pen Patriot, John Petrolino. We decided to only have a half a cup of coffee before we hit the SHOT floor. We ran into Alan Gottlieb and he asked if we were going to be around, he wanted to talk with us. We told Alan we would be there. When Alan walked away, we looked at each other and said “Let’s have a full cup”. While we were listening to Alan tell stories, Jim Shepherd came over. John & I didn’t know him, but Alan introduced us and said he would be a great guest in the stagecoach. We swapped contact info and I said I would be in touch next time I’m heading to Nashville. When I reached out to Jim, he said he would like to be on the show.
Jim and I were going to meet at a burger shop in Murfreesboro, TN, but they were closed for the week. He’s got so many amazing stories. He has employee badge #7 from CNN so he had a professional relationship with Ted Turner.. He did radio talking about financial news. He was an on air anchor for a while. He’s been involved with The Golf Wire and The Golf Channel.
He used a term I never heard of before, a post gun. I had no idea what it was. He said his dad would buy some guns that may have been in rough shape. If he wasn’t confident about their condition, his dad would tie the gun to a post, put a string on the trigger, then they would hide behind some trees or some cover and pull the string. If the gun fired, it was good. If it didn’t, at least they had cover. He’s always been a gun guy but like many, there are times in his life where he was less involved with them.
He was filming a commercial with Tiger Woods in Florida and the weather was not cooperating. So they were just hanging out. Tiger asked him if he was going to the gun show in town. Jim made some calls and found out it was SHOT Show. Being in the media, he was able to finagle some passes and he recorded some interviews. At the time, he was publishing The Golf Wire.
When he went into the media room at SHOT Show, he saw there were stacks of magazines and CDs with all the catalogs and information on them. He took The Golf Wire idea and tweaked it a bit for the shooting industry. He took his computer, added an image, added some ipsum lorem, and showed several gun industry businesses what they would be missing. He got them to sign up that day. And boom! The Outdoor Wire was created. That was 23 years ago. Now everyone who is in the know gets whichever Wire suits them. There’s about 10 wires you can subscribe to and get in your mailbox.
What I really enjoyed about my time with Jim is his stories. He’s an amazing guy with incredible stories. He flew to Tulsa for a job interview. He saw the city and knew, coming from New York City, that he didn’t want to work there. He called the person he was going to meet and canceled the interview while he was at the airport and took the next flight back to New York. The man he was going to meet was thankful because that was the only day he was able to golf and now he had what I call “the gift of time”.
Jim has taken chances. He’s been around the world. He’s done some amazing things that he told me over lunch, which I can’t repeat. I want to get the stories out about gun owners, which of course, Jim is. But I also want to hear about adventures and when people go out on a limb and try things that they don’t know how they’re going to end up. And they make them just fine. He’s got a ton of these experiences in life. I’m glad I got some of them, on and off film.
Favorite quotes:
“My definition of an anchor is the thing that holds you in place and impedes any progress. But it also holds you on the bottom and keeps you from going.”
“I’ve once again turned a hobby into work.”
“Somebody figured out they needed it, and I haven’t had to look for a job in years.”
“I never set out to be anything other than a reporter.”
“Everything happens for a reason, you may not know the reason, you may never know the reason.”
“Sometimes the things you don’t get are better than the things you get.”
The Outdoor Wire
https://www.theoutdoorwire.com/
Second Amendment Foundation
https://secure.anedot.com/saf/donate?sc=RidingShotgun
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
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Dennis McCurdy
Author, Speaker, Firewalker
Self Defense Radio Network
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