How Owning a Gun Changed Colion Noir

That's another perspective thing I've noticed too. That's a mentality that it's way more pervasive than it needs to be. Right. The way that people look at success. I was raised with my mom, and I should be a fucking failure to be honest with you. I am like the epitome of having a background where I should be nothing. My mom was like, look, if them, why not you? And not meeting any specific race or any specific type of people, but just anything. If you want something and you see someone that has something that you want, work and figure out a way so that you can get it. That should be a motivation. Not something that I look down on and say, well, why do they get to have that? That's not fair. I should have that. I think there's too much of that thought process and mentality in this country. It's a mind disease. Yeah. And I think it's scary. It's scary because then what it does is it vilifies success. And so now, instead of success being something that people aspire to, it's now become something that people attack. Yes. And I think that's incredibly dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. Yeah, I agree. It's a very weak-minded perspective too. I mean, there's different kinds of success too, right? There's a success of someone who built a business versus success of someone who's doing some shady shit with- Which is true. With loans and fucking over people with subprime mortgages. There's different things that make you successful. There's the wolf of Wall Street money that you get from ripping people off. But I think that goes without being said though. Yes. That's pretty blatant. But it's also like the gun problem, man. People are messy. If everybody was like you, no one would have a problem with guns. It's a messy problem that comes with just human beings. We're just weird. People are weird. No, you're right. Here's the funny thing though. I have this kind of utopic vision of this mass education on firearms. And the reason I have it, and I know it's a little naive to a degree, but I do believe the gun changed the way I looked at the world. And I think the gun, like a lot of- How did it change the way you look at the world? It taught me to really- Even though my mom really kind of beat it into my head, the gun almost served as like a physical symbol of self-reliance. Not that I don't need anyone, but to trust in my own ability to find a way to deal with any problems that I have. Sometimes that ability means go to somebody who's better at it than you. That can help you do something. To learn. Exactly. Or it means find the strength within yourself to overcome an issue that you're dealing with. The gun showed me, and not only it taught me that, it taught me responsibility. Because now we are talking, however I want to Disneyfy it, as far as the sporting enthusiast aspect of it, it's still something- It's life and death. That is a tool of life and death that can be used to take a life and can be used to save one. So because of that, that part is a big responsibility, especially when I'm carrying that very thing on me everywhere I go. So it had me really appreciate life more. I started to value life a lot more. Most people think you get a gun and all of a sudden you just want to take life. No. Like, I tell people this all the time. The day I have to use the gun to defend myself, I'm going to need therapy. Flat out. I'm going to need therapy. Because it's made me value life, not that I didn't value life before, but it's something that brings it to the forefront of your consciousness. When you have a gun and you understand what that gun can be used to do. And so that happens to way more people than people realize. Most people think that people get a gun and they just become reckless murderers who want to kill everybody. When in reality, there are a number of stories of people out there who, I know a guy who the firearm helped him get out of his depression. I know. I know. It sounds crazy. Sounds crazy. But he'll tell you the speech about it. And he's very, he should be, I mean, he grew up in the streets of St. Louis and he didn't have a good life. He was young and he was depressed. But when he got in the firearms, that allowed him to deal with his depression. Because he found something he was passionate about. Isn't that, that is crazy, but that's something that does actually work. When you find something you really love and pursue it and you get some, like that's one of the problems I have with the term depression. Like, boy, that's a blanket that you throw over so many different factors. Like what, it's almost like the term drugs. Like if you say, are you on drugs? Yeah, I drank a cup of coffee on drugs. I mean, really, or are you on heroin? They're both drugs. It's weird. Yeah. But depression is in many ways like that, in that there are people, and I know these people, that have a real problem with their brain and the way their brain produces chemicals. Same way some people have problems with their liver. Some people have, they're born with ineffective lungs. These are all just parts of being a person. And some people have like legitimate issues that I think they need medication for. And then there's other people that, they just don't feel good. And they call it depression because their life sucks and their job sucks and no one wants to have sex with them and they don't have any money. So they're depressed. And they say, I'm suffering from depression. And so what do you do with that? Well, some of those people get on medication. And I don't know if that's really the answer, because there's a lot of those people that I know that have discovered jujitsu or discovered other things that they, yoga even. Yeah. Physical things often because they release endorphins and because they're actually healthy for you. But also you get passionate about something and you see this improvement. And when you were talking about that with guns, I was trying to describe to someone why I like shooting guns. And I said, one of the reasons why I like it is because I'm not very good at it. You know, I like learning things. I like learning all kinds of things. Alas.