(upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ - Welcome to "A Shot of AG".

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast, which led into two XM radio shows, which led into a national television show, which led into me being right here today.

But today, today is not about me.

Today is about Kevin Moody.

How are you doing Kevin?

- Pretty good.

How are you doing?

- You're looking good.

You got the Marine hat on.

Were you a Marine?

- I was, I was, '88 to '92.

- Well, thank you for your service.

That's, aren't (indistinct) the tough ones?

Don't you guys make fun of the Army and the Air Force and all that?

- Yes, and they make fun of us.

- Okay, well who's right?

- Well, I think we're all right.

(both laugh) - Originally from how do you say Novi?

Novi, Michigan.

- Novi, Michigan.

- Where's that at?

- Suburb of Detroit.

- Okay.

- It's actually between Detroit and Lansing.

Growing up, we were taught that that meant number six, Roman numeral six, VI, N-O-V-I was the number six stagecoach stop between, yeah.

- Oh really?

- That's what we were told.

But now they're saying it's not true.

They don't know where the name came from (laughs).

- So you were lied to your entire youth.

- Yeah, I was.

Elementary school, they taught us that, yeah.

(Rob laughs) - So you graduated high school up there in Michigan?

- Yes, yup.

- Okay.

And then went into the Marines, huh?

- Yup.

- Why?

- I, you know, it's really kind of silly.

I was sick and tired of rules.

I told my dad I didn't want to listen to his rules.

So I went, - Whoa, wait a minute, wait (laughs).

- so I went and joined the Marines, and actually what was great was I was still 17, so I needed his permission to do it, so he went and came and signed permission for me to join, to leave, yeah, yeah.

- Okay, so how'd that work?

No rules in the Marines?

- Oh yeah, it was great.

It was great.

I, actually, what I think happened is I learned a new respect for rules - Okay.

- and why they were there.

- Well, generally they have, somebody has, you know, like a family member, or there is a reason.

You know, a lot of people went into the military after 9/11.

So, I mean, what, was there something that really sparked you to go into it?

- Not really.

There was a large group of us that went together.

There was a large group of guys that I was in school with that joined various branches of the service.

I wanted to serve my country.

My family, my grandfather was in World War II.

I have two uncles that were in, one uncle that served several tours of Vietnam.

And so it just, you know, most of the men in my family went into the military.

- '88 to '92, sorry, '88's fine, '89 is fine, '90s fine.

Uh oh.

- '91, yeah, Gulf War.

- Yeah.

- So I was on the USS Fairfax County, as most-- - I don't know what that is.

- It's a boat.

It's a ship.

- [Rob] Was it like a battleship?

- No, it was actually a landing ship tank.

They called it an OST, which they don't even have those anymore.

I was in artillery.

I was on a tracked artillery gun.

- Okay.

- So an OST is a flat bottom ship that the whole front of the ship would open up, and they would use it to transport tracked vehicles onto a beach.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- A lot of people are, I mean, that's getting to the older, we're old, right?

We remember this?

- Right.

- But that was, we were so worried about invading Iraq, right?

Because nobody has successfully done all this and that and the other.

I mean, when you guys were actually doing it, when the military was moving into Iraq, what was the mood?

- Again, I was on a ship most of the time.

I didn't get to go into Iraq unfortunately.

I would have loved to.

- Yeah, but the whole mood of the military, right?

- Oh we, we just wanted to crush them.

- Yeah?

- We were tired of it.

It was, you know, we knew it was coming.

We knew it was coming for a while.

We would go to California every year for combined arms exercises in January.

We would train out in the desert out there.

So it was, I think, well known that at some point in time, we were gonna end up in a conflict over there.

Everybody knows Saddam Hussein was not a good guy.

And when he invaded Kuwait, we had, the whole reason we went there is because he invaded Kuwait in August.

- Yeah, so.

- [Rob] Which is amazing how few people know that.

- Yeah, he invaded.

We went in and got him out of there pretty quick actually.

- You came home.

Worked in the tool and dye industry.

What were you doing?

- I designed tools that made sheet metal stampings on cars.

- Okay.

- So fenders, hoods, trunks, doors.

- [Rob] Did you have a background in that?

- My dad worked in that industry for a lot of years, and that's how I got into it.

- Okay, your dad seems like, talking to you, a very big influence in your life.

- Yes, absolutely.

- And when it comes to the like firearms and guns too, - Yeah.

- he was, did you guys shoot together, or?

- Oh yeah, we shot together.

That's where this box came from, out of his old hunting bag.

We used to go to Pennsylvania every year for deer season.

That's where my dad grew up in the Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh area.

- Yeah.

- And so we used to go down to Pennsylvania every year with his uncles and family and go hunting every year, deer hunting every year down there.

Go down there in the summertime sometimes or go down for rabbit hunting.

And we shot together a lot.

We went to the range.

It was our hobby is what we did.

My dad actually had his firearms license when I got to the military.

- [Rob] So what does that mean?

- He had a federal firearms license.

That means he was legally, you apply for a license through the federal government.

The ATF is the one that handles it all.

And it allows you to sell firearms to, you know, the general public.

I mean, there's different types of licenses.

- Sure.

- You have ones for, you know, to manufacture firearms, you have ones to import firearms, and you have ones to sell firearms or ammunition.

Right.

- Okay.

The 300 one-mega, is that good for rabbits?

- 300 Savage, 300 Savage.

Yeah, yeah, they're, I hear the rabbits are aggressive in this area.

You might need that 300 Savage.

(Rob laughs) - That's where the jackelopes are.

- Yeah.

(both laugh) - You are, you're the owner of KAMS Shooting Sports.

- Yes.

- So does that make you a gun dealer?

- Yes, yes.

We are an FFL dealer.

- FFL?

- Yes, stands for Federal Firearms license.

- Okay.

- So we are an FFL dealer.

We're over in Morton.

We have a gun shop.

We have a range.

And we do some armory repair and have a gun smith that does, we do cleanings and try to offer a full service if we can.

- So you own a gun shop in Illinois?

- Yeah, that's almost an oxymoron to say that.

Illinois is the most restrictive state in the nation.

I know a lot of-- - Why?

- My opinion?

We've had one party rule in the state for a long time, so.

- [Rob] Chicago pushes a lot of it.

- Chicago controls everything, and they do not like guns in Chicago.

- Yeah.

- So, what these anti-gun politicians do is they listen to people that have never owned a gun in their life.

They push that national agenda, right?

You watch TV.

Oh, it's gun violence.

There's no such thing as gun violence.

It's violence.

When we were younger, they called it gang violence, right?

- Yeah.

- It wasn't gun violence.

And so they follow that national agenda, and they convince people that if you had gun restrictions that it would lower crime.

- Okay.

- But that's not true.

- I mean, that's always the argument that gets brought up back and forth, right?

Because you got the people - Sure.

- that are very anti-gun, and then you get people like you that are pro-gun, and they both argue, they're saying, "Hey, the guns are the reasons," and you would say, "If there was concealed carry, there would be less violence."

Is that fair to say?

- No, no.

Well, I do think that an armed society's a polite society, absolutely.

Are you gonna walk into a liquor store and rob the place if half the people in there are armed?

No, you're not.

The biggest thing is they think that the guns are committing the crimes on their own.

They're not.

Criminals don't follow the law.

If I make it really hard for you to get a gun, and I say you have to go through several background checks, you have to wait three days, you have to go through all, jump through all these hoops to get a gun, do you think the criminal is gonna do that?

- Probably not.

- No, is he gonna go get a FOID card?

Is he gonna go apply?

He's gonna fill out his paperwork?

He's gonna do that stuff?

No, he's not.

He's gonna go steal a gun, or there is also a black market on guns.

So the same thing, the more illegal you make it, the more expensive you make it on the black market.

So it, you know, just like drugs, they turned it into a multi-billion dollar industry, because they made it illegal.

So, you know, lo and behold, here's the odd thing.

It's illegal for a criminal to have a gun.

It's illegal for a criminal to have a gun.

- A convicted?

- It's illegal for a convicted felon.

- Yeah, - It's illegal for anybody that's had any domestic violence.

That's a misdemeanor.

- Yeah.

- And it's illegal for anybody that's mentally ill to own a firearm.

- Which I think are all three good things.

- I think those are good things.

I think that's fine.

The law-abiding citizen doesn't want bad guys to have guns, right?

- Yeah.

- But yet the bad guys get guns, and then they want to blame the guns instead of the bad guys.

- All right, tell me, in the state of Illinois.

So this is what you're, you have, you're a trainer, so you can train people to get a concealed carry, correct?

- I am a concealed carry instructor, yes, but I'm an NRA training counselor.

So in order to be, in order to get your concealed carry through Illinois, you're licensed to be a concealed carry instructor, you have to be an NRA instructor first.

- Okay.

- And actually, the state of Illinois used NRA basic pistol as their platform for their firearm safety, for their safety and for their firearm handling portion of their class.

They use, right?

- Makes sense.

- So then once you get approved, become an NRA instructor, then you can apply for your instructor number through the state of Illinois, and you have to meet their criteria on a curriculum of what you teach, so.

- Confusing.

- It is.

It's really confusing.

What people need to know is the state mandates 16 hours of training.

That 16 hours consists of basic safety, firearm safety, basic firearm training, your Illinois legal section, and then your range time.

- Okay.

I was in Des Moines, Iowa this weekend, - Right.

- and we went to, they call them fleet farms.

- Yes.

- Same thing, we got them here, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- They had 223 ammo on sale.

- Okay.

- So I had a bunch of, I've got a bunch of guns, but they got lost in a boat accident.

Huh?

You know what I'm saying?

- Yeah, I hear that a lot, I hear that a lot, yeah.

(Rob laughs) - So I bought the ammo, and I went to buy it, and the young lady ringing it up, she says, "What's your birthday?"

And I said, and that was it.

That was it, in Iowa.

- Right, right.

- Illinois, tell people what a FOID card is.

- Okay, a FOID card was brought about 1968, and 1968 is a very significant year, because that's the same year they passed the National Firearms Act.

So 1968, part of the public safety initiative, they made a card in Illinois to show who's legal enough to possess a firearm, or ammunition, or a BB gun over 700 feet per second, or a black powder gun, muskets, anything, any type of firearm.

So it's not about buying a gun or buying ammunition.

It's about possession.

You don't have a FOID card, can't posses a firearm or ammo or a BB gun.

- Oh, let me stop you there for one second, - Okay, sure.

- because how many people just heard that, he goes, "Oh shoot, I've got dad's or grandpa's shotgun in the closet somewhere that we just have, and I don't have a FOID card.

Technically, are they illegal?"

- Yes.

Matter of fact, there's a famous case, and for those of who have been paying attention right now, it's Brown vs. State of Illinois.

It's gonna go in front of the Illinois Supreme Court.

January 11th, I believe it's supposed to go in front of the Supreme Court.

So Vivian Brown was a woman who had never committed a crime in her life.

She was a law-abiding citizen.

She had a 22 rifle in her home.

- Okay.

- She was arrested, she was treated as a criminal, and she was charged with a crime, because she didn't have a FOID card.

- Well, she's probably doing something else though, right?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, she sounds dangerous (laughs).

- Well I honestly, I don't know anything about it, but was she like - She was.

- selling drugs out of her house and they like tacked this on?

- No, no, she, no.

She was a completely law-abiding citizen.

She had, from my understanding, I don't know the story behind Ms. Brown, but she had the gun for protection.

She was scared, because she had a, I believe, an abusive ex-boyfriend or husband.

So, and somebody turned her in for having the gun.

- [Rob] That's how they get ya.

- Right.

- That's why I lost all my guns in a boating accident.

- Right, right.

(Rob laughs) But it, so there was, the FOID card was actually found unconstitutional by a federal judge.

And that's what's gonna go in front of the, that's what's gonna go in front of the Supreme Court, - The Illinois Supreme Court.

- Illinois Supreme Court.

My thoughts are it'll have to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, but they can't charge you for a right.

It's kind of like poll tax, if anybody ever heard of the term poll tax?

- Poll tax?

- Poll tax.

They, years ago, they, - Her whole life?

- No, for voting at the polls.

- [Rob] Oh, I got you, I got you.

- So there was, years ago, there was states that would charge people money to vote, 'cause they said, "Well, if you're not, if you don't own property, and you're not a taxpayer, property tax payer, then you have to pay money to vote."

Well the Supreme Court found that unconstitutional.

You can't make somebody pay for a constitutional right.

- Yeah.

- So a FOID card, they charge you $10 for what?

So you can possess a firearm.

The Second Amendment gives you the right to possess a firearm in the United States.

- Okay, all right.

There's so much to cover in such a short amount of time.

You own the KAMS, right?

KAMS Shooting Sports?

- Right.

- Gun dealer.

You're selling guns.

If I wanted a gun, I could go on and buy it from you.

- Yes, yes.

- Is that gonna change?

- The purchase of ammo's gonna change.

They just passed a bill this past year.

That is the, they called it the "Fix the FOID" bill.

What that does is it took the expiration off your FOID card.

They're gonna be good forever now, so you don't have to them every 10 years.

- [Rob] Okay, that's good.

- Well, except now the dealers or whoever sells ammunition is gonna be required to background check you for that ammo, so we have to validate that FOID card.

- So if you buy a gun, I don't know, there's a waiting period.

- Yes, three-day wait period in all guns.

- And that waiting period is they're doing background checks on you, plus you're not selling a gun to someone that's all mad and ready to go use it.

- Well, no, the background, yeah.

It's supposed to be exactly that, the cool off period, and it used to only be for handguns.

- Yeah.

- But now it's for all guns.

- [Rob] And now that's gonna be that way for ammo?

- No, for ammo, you're gonna, it's not gonna be a wait period, but they're gonna have to validate your FOID card.

- How the hell do you keep up with all this?

- It's very difficult.

It's very difficult.

I, people asked me one time, "What's it like to be a gun dealer?"

And I said, "Well, if you're gonna be a gun dealer, I hope you like paperwork, - Yeah.

- because you're gonna do a lot of it."

- So is this, I mean, if this goes through, what are you gonna do?

- The, well, the ammo thing?

It already went through.

- [Rob] So it's a done deal?

- It's a done deal.

We're supposed to start this, they gave us about 10 days to figure out how to do it, because we just found, - (indistinct)?

- yeah, we found this out yesterday, and it takes effect January 1.

- So if you just ordered a bunch of ammo, and now this comes through, - Right, well, I'm also a range, so I don't know what I'm gonna do as far as like if you come in to shoot and you're like, "Yeah, I want to go out on the range and shoot, I need a box of nine millimeter."

"Give me your FOID, I got to validate it."

So according to the state police, we're gonna have to validate the FOID or call them, but they have no system in place for us to do that.

So we're, we actually, right now, don't even know how we're gonna do it.

- How many guns, do you know how many gun dealers are in the state?

- There used to be 2,400.

- Okay.

- When the state of Illinois passed their dealer bill back in 2019, it went from 2,400 to 1,153.

This past week, I got a phone call from Illinois National Bank, because the state police messed up on their billing process.

Whenever we do a background check, we have to pay $2.

It costs the dealer $2 for that system.

They screwed up something in the bills, and the lady from the billing department called me.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So I said, "Hey, how many bills do you send out a month?"

And she said about 790.

So we're actually down to less than 800 dealers in Illinois, less than 800 companies that are conducting firearm transfers.

- And that would include like your Bass Pro Shop?

- Absolutely, yeah.

- Okay.

So I'm sitting here, I'm listening to you.

I think you're very passionate about gun safety, selling guns.

I believe that you love what you're doing.

- Absolutely.

- At what point do you throw up your hands?

- Pretty soon.

Pretty soon.

- Is that flippant, or are you serious that you're about done?

- I could be.

I don't know.

I mean, we really don't know.

A lot of us are waiting to see what happens this year.

It's an election year.

Again, Illinois has been under one party rule for a very long time.

If they're able to make some changes and turn things around, then, you know, dealers will stay.

If they don't turn things around, right now, we're losing three dealers a month.

We lost, we lost 350 dealers in 30 months.

So, I mean, if you're losing that many dealers, it's just gonna continue.

- Do you think most people don't understand when you're training people to do concealed carry that the juxta of it is firearm safety?

- It's, yeah, safety first, always.

So when we step into the classroom, I mean, it's nothing but safety.

I mean, we walk in the door and preach it from the second people walk in the door.

They get a safety briefing for everything they do.

It is safety first.

We have to be safety first.

Every firearms instructor is like that.

There's no live ammo in the classroom.

There's no firearms in the, no live firearms in the classroom.

Most instructors like me use training firearms.

So they'll use a plastic one or a wood one, or, you know, a disabled firearm or something in that effect.

- Yeah.

- So, we, the classroom area has to be, you know, hate to use the word safe space, but it's gotta be a safe area, right.

- Yeah.

I think a lot of, you know, I'm assuming you grew up in the same way that I did where you had, my dad was showing me how to use a gun and firearm safety, and then if I didn't do it, I mean, it's a slap up alongside the back of the head.

- Oh absolutely.

Yeah, you don't, I mean, it's real simple.

Safe direction, finger off the trigger, and don't load it till you're ready to use it.

- What did every person that went through firearms training think, the first thing they thought when they heard the Alec Baldwin thing?

Why was he pointing it at somebody?

- Oh man.

Yeah, he.

- Even a toy gun?

I can't even, I had a toy gun, a little gun like this, and we were talking about that, and I realized I had it pointing up, because it's ingrained in my head, it never, ever gets pointed to where it could do any harm.

- Right, and that's, you know, I, it bewilders me that they needed to do that for a camera angle.

Why did you have to point it at a person?

He could point it at the camera, right?

- Yeah.

- I'm sure that there's remotes on cameras.

Somebody could have stood to one side.

As a matter of fact, it's well known a lot of these prop guns, they would never point them at, in the direction of a person, because a lot of them used to shoot wadding, you know, - Yeah.

- but he was using a live firearm.

The other thing that gets me is how did live ammunition end up in that firearm?

- Or a functioning gun?

- Right.

I mean, to use an actual, real life firearm with real live ammunition, I understand they're Hollywood, and they want to be as realistic as possible, but yeah, and he's, the person handling the firearm has to be the one to check it.

So I know he claims that ah, he never pulled the trigger, he pulled the hammer back.

I don't buy that for a second, because on any revolver, and you're a farmer, every farmer knows how a revolver works.

There's probably a revolver and a 22 on every farm in the country.

- Pretty simple.

- Right, right.

- Yeah.

- As you pull the hammer back, what's the cylinder do?

It rotates.

- Yeah.

- Right?

So the cylinder's not gonna be lined up with the barrel for it to go off.

So it's something that probably did not happen.

The other thing is it's all on film, so why aren't we?

- It probably got lost.

- Why aren't we seeing the film (laughs)?

- Yeah, it probably, I'm sure that film got lost somehow.

- Probably got lost.

It might be that boating accident again.

- Yeah, that might be (laughs).

All right, if someone is thinking they want to go through concealed carry in Illinois, what advice do you give them?

- Train, right?

Train.

You're not carrying a gun to be cool.

You're not getting your permit just to get your, if you're just gonna get a permit to get the permit, don't bother.

If you're gonna carry a firearm, train.

Remember why you're doing it.

Why are you carrying a gun?

To protect yourself, to protect your family, to protect your home, your farm.

Remember why you're doing it.

Train.

You only have to be as, better than the criminal, right?

You only have to be better than the guy trying to kill you.

But remember, train.

So we offer more of, the concealed carry classes in Illinois, there's a lot of information and very little what I consider training.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- You spend four hours going through the Illinois legal section.

I mean, drink lots of coffee.

Stand up once in a while.

It's really exhilarating things, but we have to teach it.

- Yeah.

- So we have to spend all this time on the Illinois legal stuff.

We don't get to spend a whole lot of time on gun handling.

And that's where I tell people that the gun handling in a, or the firearm handling in a concealed carry class isn't really high.

We offer more, NRA has a CCW class that's far more advanced.

Everything's done out of the holster.

Everything's timed, right?

- Yeah.

Let me end on a tough question for you here, - Okay.

- and I didn't pre-warn you on this, so I do apologize.

- Not a problem.

- There's gonna be people out there watching and say gun nut.

He just doesn't care what happens with these guns.

It's all about protecting the rights of guns.

What do you say to that?

- The rights of guns or the right of?

- The right, I mean, it doesn't matter what happens, just don't take away my AR15.

- Well, I understand the argument of the anti-gun side.

And here's the thing, just like every other topic, you have your three sides.

You've got the anti-side, the pro-side, and the people in the middle that don't really care, because it's not their issue.

Again, it's not the guns that do anything wrong, and it's not the law-abiding citizen.

It's the criminals that do the bad part.

So taking guns away from the law-abiding citizens isn't gonna lower crime, and it's not gonna make anything safer.

There's absolutely no reason to take guns.

Guns haven't changed in 100 years.

The AR15 was made in the 1950s, right?

And AR does not stand for assault rifle.

It stands for ArmaLite rifle.

It's a brand.

And it's ArmaLite, because it's made out of aluminum.

So no, I say, show me what gun, if guns hurt people, mine are all defective, because they haven't done it.

It's the, we have to look at the criminal.

We have to look at who is committing these crimes.

We have to stop the guns from getting in the hands of the bad people.

- Yeah.

- So it's not that I don't care what happens.

I absolutely care what happens, and I'm willing to have that discussion with the anti-gun community, but they have to realize it's not the inanimate object that's doing it.

It's the criminals that are doing it.

- Yeah.

- So that, and on a side note of that, the same politicians that are passing these laws, anti-gun laws, they are synonymous with anti-police laws.

They want to defund the police.

And they're synonymous with no bail.

The exact-- - Okay, And that, I didn't mean to hit you with that question, - Right, right.

- but I am, I mean, I have a lot of guns.

I have more guns than my wife realizes, you know what I'm saying?

- Sure.

- So I wanted to, I wanted to see the other side of it too.

- Absolutely.

- Because I think if you aren't around guns, I do think it's hard to understand.

you know, when people come to my house, and they see the gun safe and that, I can see the uncomfort, and I, it's hard for me to understand, so that's why I was trying to do.

I do want to get, where can people find KAMS Shooting Sports?

- We're in Morton, Illinois.

We're right, we're in the same building as ACE Hardware.

We'll right behind (indistinct) ACE Hardware, - Okay.

- so right off Detroit Avenue, Morton, Illinois.

- [Rob] Does he got a website?

- I do, kamrange.com.

- How do you spell that?

- K-A-M-R-A-N-G-E.com.

- Okay, and yeah, we didn't, I ran out of time, but KAMS, so tell me what the K-A-M-S-S stands for.

- Kevin and Moody.

It's for me and dad.

- That's really cool.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, you lost your dad, what in 2000 and?

- 2016.

2016, lost him, yeah.

- 2016.

To Alzheimer's, which I, that's how I lost my dad too, so.

- It's a horrible illness.

- It is horrible, horrible illness, all right.

Kevin, I want to thank you for coming on here.

I know it's a tough subject.

People don't like to talk about it, but I think you do a very good representation, and I'd be more than willing to have an anti-gun person on here too.

So Kevin Moody, thank you very much.

Everybody else, (upbeat music) we'll catch you next week.