An Interview with Tom Gresham
Interview by Gila Hayes
In the ongoing fight to win back self-defense rights and block new incursions into these basic freedoms, it is easy to think restrictions have never been as extreme as they are today. The eagerness of states, bureaucracies, judges, and others to push through unconstitutional laws is overwhelming. When tempted to give up, it helps to reflect on the history of bad laws reversed, court cases won, and the people who led ordinary citizens in those fights.
Earlier this month, I enjoyed a conversation with Tom Gresham, host and creator of Gun Talk Radio, about 30 years of history of defending the right to own and use firearms. His optimism and commitment are contagious, so let’s switch now to interview format and share his views and experiences in his own words. Enjoy a chatty, longer version of our visit at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMQqkwVkc7s .
eJournal: Before I met you, Tom, yours was a common byline in gun magazines. Then attacks on gun rights in 1994 propelled you into the bully pulpit that is Gun Talk Radio and you’ve dominated talk radio for armed citizens on AM and FM radio ever since. While you keep us updated on what we really love – guns and shooting – I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the way you inspire rank and file, everyday men and women to fight for liberty. What led to your foray into broadcasting?
Gresham: I’d been writing for 20 years and doing TV. I was co-hosting a show on ESPN with my dad, Grits Gresham, called Chevy Trucks Shooting Sports America. It was on ESPN, not ESPN 2, and was the first gun show on general media. I found that I liked doing broadcast. Then the opportunity popped up to do radio. I thought, “Well, you know, talk radio is coming along. This fellow Rush Limbaugh is doing not too badly.” I figured it would last six, 10, 12 weeks. Now we just hit 30 years; it’s amazing.
I remember the time – we didn’t have much in the way of Internet, we certainly did not have podcasts and it was even before Fox News. The general media was very much the same as it is right now. We had no mass media way to get out a positive message about guns, gun owners, or the Second Amendment.
A year before we started the radio show in 1995, the Clinton gun ban passed, the so-called assault weapons ban and ban on standard capacity magazines. Think about all these phrases! You cannot let them define the language. The gun banners have been very good at defining the language. They created “Saturday Night Special,” and “assault weapon” and “ghost gun” and “high-capacity magazine.” We are fools if we use those terms because the general public hears “assault weapon” and that sounds like a machine gun. They hear “high capacity,” well, that sounds like more than you need. We have to be careful how we describe things, because they are very good at controlling the language.
1994 was a low time. Gun control laws were passing left and right. Honestly, are people today thinking now is tough? No, this is glorious time. We’ve seen tougher times when, even as optimistic as I am, I thought, “This is only going to get worse and will never get better. We are going to eventually lose our gun rights.” That’s what it felt like 30 years ago.
Now we’re winning in the courts. My heavens, we have Donald Trump’s second term as president. Who would have imagined that? I don’t know what that’s going to mean for the Department of Justice and the ATF. We’ll see what Pam Bondi really is going to do. We’ll see.
This is a long-term, constant fight that will be going for the rest of our lives. There will be ups and downs and there will be disappointments. We’re going to get some supreme court decisions that we hate, and we’ll think, “My God, how can we recover from this?” But if we have a 10-year or 20-year or 50-year plan, it really helps. You can say, “We took our lumps on this one. What’s the next thing we have to do?”
eJournal: Before getting lost in politics, I’d like to highlight my very favorite thing you do: the Truth Squad. I loved the Truth Squad so much! I wonder if there’s a version of it we could put to work again in our pro-liberty grassroots efforts today. What was the Truth Squad? What did it accomplish?
Gresham: Let me back up because there’s a part of the story that you don’t know. Before we had Gun Talk online, I wanted gun owners to get messages to legislators. I was trying to figure out how to get out messages to gun owners. All we had was mail or putting it into a magazine, and magazines had a three-month lead time.
My dad and I came up with this weird idea I call the mayonnaise jar method. I seeded it with $500 to print prepaid, pre-stamped postcards about particular gun bills that we put on the counters at gun stores. The cards were free; you just filled it out with your congressman’s name and wrote, “I oppose this bill. I want you to oppose this bill.” It was already stamped, so you just signed your name, and the gun store would mail it. Oh, yeah, that mayonnaise jar? That was for contributions. If you want, drop a buck or $5 or $20 in it to help us pay for this. It was as crude as you could imagine, but we got a lot of postcards sent to legislators and we made a difference.
Then along came the radio show and I had this idea to get people to counter the media’s anti-gun lies. I’ve actually caught CNN making up quotes. I found and called the person at the ATF they quoted as having said that assault weapons are used in the majority of crimes and murders. I knew it wasn’t true.
He said, “I didn’t say that. Not only that, but I’ve also never talked to anybody at CNN.” They made up the interview, all the quotes, everything. The person at the ATF said, “If they had talked to me, I would have told them the exact opposite, that these rifles are rarely used in crime.”
I wondered how can we counter that? Before the Internet really got going, we really had no way to do outreach. All we could do was write letters to newspaper editors. I wanted to find two volunteers in each state – a hundred volunteers who would respond to the media’s lies. Well, we ended up with 20,000 people who said, “Yeah, count me in. I will do this.” We called them the Truth Squad.
Today we’re well beyond sending letters to the newspaper editor, but I like your idea that it’s time to resurrect the Truth Squad and do something else with it. Today, you can counter media lies even more easily with responses online. We now have Community Notes on X, formerly Twitter. When somebody lies about something, we have the ability to comment, “No, the things that you’re saying are simply untrue.”
Be disciplined about the way you respond. I remind people that an online conversation is like shouting at each other. You’re not trying to convince the person you’re talking to; you’re actually using them as a way to speak to all the onlookers.
The more reasonable you appear, the crazier the person who’s arguing with you will get; it works like jujitsu. You come back with very reasonable, reasoned things. You don’t call them names and they get madder and madder and to onlookers, they look like the crazy person, and you look like the reasonable, rational person. You’re the gun owner who’s simply saying, “Well, these are actually the stats, and this is actually the information.” Let the other side look crazy.
For our Truth Squad now, we could do well just to have our side understand that a reasonable, rational, not mad, not crazy response is the secret sauce. That really is what works.
eJournal: Well put! To your point about providing real statistics, sometimes I freeze up before engaging in arguments, unsure that I know the facts. Am I going to get called out if I mistakenly say it was the Gun Control Act of 1958 instead of 1968? If I make a factual error, am I’m going to look like an idiot? Can I win the argument without a level of specificity that opens me up to making errors?
Gresham: You can, but the information is very much available. It’s not hidden. It’s easy to find these days. Do a Google search, a search on DuckDuckGo, whatever you use. Go on X formerly Twitter and ask me. I am @Guntalk on X, so ask me, “Look, somebody said this, what would be the right response?” and I’ll say, “Well, look, this is the information.”
When somebody says something outrageous, you can start, for instance, by saying, “I can understand how you might believe that, because it’s been repeated so often, but the reality is…” and then you do something you’ll see the politicians do a lot. I call it the "bump and run." They’ll say, “Well, that’s a very important point, but…” then switch subjects. We say, “They never actually answered the question.” Really, they weren’t there to answer the question; they were there to make their point.
Don’t get distracted by things like, “If you like guns, you want to see children being murdered.” Don’t take that bait! Just say, “That’s ridiculous, of course. Gun owners are obviously one of the most responsible and law-abiding groups of people out there. People who have concealed carry permits, for instance, commit crimes at a rate of roughly 1 percent of the general population. That’s from the Department of Law Enforcement in Florida, where they did the studies. In every state where they pass concealed carry laws, people who get the permits rarely commit violent crimes. It’s almost unheard of.”
You point out the information, but you start off with, ‘Well, I can understand how you might feel that way, because that’s been reported erroneously, unfortunately. Here’s the actual information.”
eJournal: Great coaching! Going back in time, I’d like to get a sense of the political atmosphere that preceded the launch of Gun Talk. The Brady law passed in 1993 and then the Clinton weapon ban in 1994, but the phrase “the assault weapon ban” is repeated so often that it creates the notion that it was the first big incursion. I disagree. Trade-offs to get the Firearms Owner Protection Act put a high cost on private citizens owning silencers and on machine guns in private citizens’ hands.
Gresham: Yes, but there are always trade-offs. Politics is about trade-offs. You never get everything you want. Often people say, “The NRA didn’t do this; the NRA didn’t do that.”
I have several responses, “Well, then what did you do? What? Why are you counting on somebody else to do it? Did you contact your congressman, your senator? Did you call them? Did you write letters? Did you go see them when they came to town halls?”
“Well, no, I’m busy.” Typical response: “I’m busy. I have a job.” Guess what? Everybody’s busy. Everybody has a job, and everybody has exactly 24 hours in a day. If you don’t show up, you’re telling people it’s not important. I’m sorry, it is as simple as that. If you don’t show up, you’re telling people it’s not important. The world belongs to those who show up.
eJournal: You’re a master of behind-the-scenes work with lawmakers. What happens behind the scenes that doesn’t make the headlines?
Gresham: You know the saying about watching sausage being made? I watched some experts at the state legislature, and it was educational. In this instance, we had a committee meeting, and the members of the committee were fairly evenly split on how they were going to vote. Our side knew several who were going to vote against us on the gun issue had completely unrelated votes coming up on their own bills. We made sure to have this hearing when the committee on the other bill was going to vote. They had to excuse themselves for five minutes to go to the other room to vote and the moment they left the room, we called the question, and we got our bill passed. That’s how the sausage gets made. You can show up at hearings and shout and rant and rave, but the real work has been done before we walk into the room. The decisions have been made.
Who’s doing that work? Your state gun rights organization does that work. This gets to the heart of the matter: everybody must belong to and donate to their state gun rights organization. That’s where the rubber meets the road. Often, the state gun rights organization can stop bills from coming up at all. They also get the right bills introduced, and get them introduced into the right committee, because they know how that happens. These are things that I don’t know, because I’m not working there all the time, but the people in your state gun rights group knows. That’s what they do.
People will say, “I belong to Gun Owners of America or Second Amendment Foundation.” That’s good; we need to do that, but you’ve got to take care of your state group, as well.
People will say, “I live in Montana. We don’t have that problem.” Yes, you do. Trust me. The gun ban lobby is handing bills to legislators in your state to try to get them introduced every single year, and you’ve got to be vigilant in fighting them. The other thing your state group will do for you is let you know what’s going on because none of us can actually know what the politicians are doing all the time.
People will say, “Well, we’ll always have the Second Amendment.” No, you won’t. No, you won’t! If you lose public opinion badly enough, you will lose the Second Amendment. I think maybe some people don’t fully understand or appreciate that.
eJournal: That suggests not getting fixated on federal laws. At the state level we get red flag laws, magazine capacity restrictions, outright bans on certain kinds of guns, and what’s this new Colorado law requiring a training certificate before you can buy a semi-auto? Folks will say, “That’s blatantly unconstitutional. That will be overturned,” and maybe they’re right, but do we labor under that unconstitutional restriction for three, five, 10 years before the supreme court grants certiorari?
Gresham: A lot of the battles have moved to the state level because the gun banners can’t get gun control laws through Congress. They used to be able to pass laws in Congress. They can’t get those done anymore, so now they’re moving into states to get them passed there, state by state by state. They are getting it done! They’re actually being successful.
We’d like to say, “The supreme court’s going to rule and make all those go away.” Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. We don’t know. We’ve been trying to get cert granted on the Snope case about the ban on semi-automatics and we’re trying to get the supreme court to take on Ocean State Tactical, too. That’s the ban on standard capacity magazines. Seven times in one case, eight times in the other, they have decided to shove it down the road, when they did not grant cert to take the case but did not deny it either. It’s in limbo.
We still have to fight the state battles. If they pass bans in the states, and we start challenging them in the courts, it can be seven, eight, nine years, and we don’t know what the makeup of the supreme court’s going to be then, do we?
eJournal: No, no, we don’t. There’s something else we don’t know. Imagine a heavy-handed background check requiring long waits to get permission to possess a gun. We don’t know who’s going to need a gun who won’t have that means of defense. Lives are lost under these restrictions. That’s really the bottom line.
Gresham: Lives are lost while women in particular are waiting to get the okay. They’ve decided to buy a gun because their lives are in danger and somebody says, you have to wait 10 days. The woman says, “No, he’s coming back tonight to kill me.” That’s the reality.
eJournal: It’s disturbing. You mentioned Trump’s return to the presidency. The first Trump election caused a collective sigh of relief and a chance to retrench. This time around, I am not sure that I’m feeling such a profound sense of reprieve. I’m anxious. I’m curious about your take on gun rights for the foreseeable future. Where are the fights going to be?
Gresham: Everywhere. Everywhere is the answer. The fights are going to be everywhere: local, state, and federal. They’re going to be in Congress. They’re going to be in the courts. They’re going to be in the appellate courts. Most certainly, we’re going to have more cases going to the supreme court.
I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. We’re 50 days into the second Trump presidency right now. He is a different person. I am, weirdly enough, very glad that he did not win re-election the first time because he was not ready for the presidency then. He is much tougher now, much more determined. He now fully understands how much the deep state, including Republicans, stabbed him in the back. The bureaucrats said, we’re here to help you and then did everything they could do to sabotage him.
We have a real problem with the media carrying the water for the Democrats. But, you know, now WE are the media – you are the media, I am the media. Every person out there now has a voice. Now, maybe you have three people following you on Facebook or Twitter, but you have three people. You can talk to people. Each of us has a megaphone, some are just larger than others. We have to be smart about how we use those megaphones because when we, the gun-owning public, say things that are stupid, outrageous or frighten the public, we harm our cause. Simple as that.
A lot of times the folks on our side who are saying outrageous things just want somebody to pay attention to them. Don’t pay attention to them; don’t feed them or give them a platform. Just ignore them. That robs them of their outreach, or if you just can’t help yourself and you’ve got to respond, just give them a very heartfelt, “Well, bless your heart.” Then bump and run and move on to make a good point.
You know what we could do more that we don’t do enough? Telling the public more about self-defense gun uses. It’s a message that doesn’t get out. The media doesn’t cover it, so the public doesn’t know about it and thinks people never use guns to save their own lives or save other people. We now have access to this information much more than we ever did before. We can find the stories, publicize them, put them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the others. You can share those stories.
You can set up a Google Alert to search for self-defense gun uses, then send you links to the stories of people who actually saved themselves and other people. So many people are using guns to save lives, real people, good people, people like you and me. You can start sharing that and the public goes, “Wow, I didn’t realize that.”
eJournal: That puts a human face on the issue. If you were to write a blueprint, a planning document on how to advance Second Amendment rights, what would it look like?
Gresham: I would like to form a university, an outreach training program for our people to do better media, because our people are not very good at it. This is like someone saying, I’m not a good shot. I’d say, “Okay, in a day, we can make you a good shot,” because we know how to teach shooting. There are certain techniques that you can learn.
There are also people who know how to teach you to be good at media, to be good at public speaking, to be good at being interviewed. For instance, the bump and run is a great technique. Somebody’s going to ask you a question – typically they’ll say, “Well, how do you feel about children getting access to guns?”
It’s a gotcha question, right? But if you’re prepared for it, you go, “All of us are concerned about that, and it’s one of the reasons that we have been working so hard and so successfully to tackle that issue.” Boom, go to where you want to go.
All right, here’s another technique. You’re being interviewed, somebody asks a question, you start answering, and you realize, “I have talked myself into a corner, I need to stop and get out of this.” Don’t keep pushing forward. Stop in the middle of the sentence. Just stop talking and say, “I’m sorry, I lost my thought. Could you ask me that question again?” Take another swing at it. Make them throw you the pitch again and they’ll throw it to you again, and now you’ll do a better job the second time. It’s a technique like if I’m teaching grip, sights, and trigger. I can teach you how to do all that. I can teach you how to do interviews well, too.
I’m thinking about outreach. Look, the reality is if the needle is straight up on public opinion, if we can move it about two ticks, we win.
eJournal: Is the margin that tight?
Gresham: It is that tight. The public has a terrible misunderstanding about guns. One of the problems is people on our side don’t understand or believe that for millions of people, guns mean crime. Period. For many people, guns mean crime. They think that’s the only thing that guns are ever used for because it’s the only thing they’ve ever heard of.
There are smart ways to push back; it is a media play and would take a lot of money, but I would love for us to be able to hire really good advertising agencies and really good PR agencies and perfect our messaging really well. Before the people who were in charge took the money, the NRA could do some of that. Now membership and donations are down by half. As good as Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition and Gun Owners of America are, none of them are nearly as large or as impressive or effective as the NRA was and can be again.
We need a good, strong NRA, and I think it’s coming back. It’s going to be up to each person to figure out when to go back. To be kind about this, I’d say, “I’m PO’d, okay?” but at a certain point you’ve got to get over yourself and your righteous indignation. You’ve got to say, “How do we win?”
Some of the gun groups – I don’t have to name them – love to go, “F-U, F-U, F-U!” and that is not persuasive to the general public, other than convincing them that we are crazy and uncouth people they don’t want to have guns. It is effective at getting money but doesn’t actually persuade the public. That’s the battle to win. When you get public opinion on your side, you win.
eJournal: I’d love to see you as college dean of Media University.
Gresham: Trust me, we would not have on-campus riots. You could complain about the score you got at the match last week, but that’s about it.
eJournal: That’s a great dream! Meanwhile, let’s get active commenting online and using that megaphone to get our message published. That was a great point. What’s the bottom line for getting this done?
Gresham: If you’re serious about this, if this is an important part of your life, each person has to get up every day and ask, “What am I going to do today?” Not, “What’s the NRA going to do or what’s Tom going to do or what’s Gila going to do.” Ask, “What am I going to do today?”
Do just one thing today to help the Second Amendment, to further gun rights, to make people safer with their guns. Become a firearms instructor, take people shooting, introduce people to the shooting sports. I call it vaccinating people.
If somebody has been to the range and shot and said, “Man, that was fun, I had a good time. Those people are really having fun and they were actually very kind and welcoming and helpful to me,” then no one can ever convince that person afterwards that gun owners are evil and fascist and mean and all the other things we get called. They’ll say, “Well, that was not my experience.”
Several people from the LBGT community have told me in a whisper, “I was told not to hang around with gun people because you know how they are. Then I went to the range, and everybody said, come on out, let’s go shooting. Of course, we’ve known for years you were gay. We don’t care. We just don’t care. Are you safe with guns? Are you having fun? End of story. Let’s go shoot.”
The more welcoming we are, the more people we introduce to shooting, the better off we are. That’s our secret weapon. Honestly, we forget that shooting is fun. You take somebody out shooting and they hit a target the first time, and they turn around say, “Can I do it some more?” And you go, “Yes, you keep shooting, I’ll keep loading. You can shoot all of the ammo I brought. If you’re having fun, we’re going to make this happen for you.” It’s great. You have won that person over.
Back to your question, what else can we each do? Make phone calls. I make it a point that when I call my senator’s office, they know my voice, so they’ll say, “Hi Tom,” without me introducing myself, and I’ll say, “Hi, just wanted to make sure the senator knows that we got this bill coming up and I would really appreciate it if she would vote against that.” I’m always friendly, always appreciative, and always respectful of their time.
There’s another thing we can do that’s kind of fun if you go about it the right way. We gun owners tend to want to be left alone, we don’t join groups, and we don’t want to tell people what to do. Instead, how about getting together with your shooting buddies and going to city council meetings? Sit in the back and don’t say anything. The first time they won’t notice, the second time they’re going to wonder who you are. It will make them nervous. The third time they’re going to ask, “Who are those people back there?” and now they know we’re watching them. The same goes for school board meetings.
Simply put, the only thing that’s truly important to you is what you will spend time on. We all have different amounts of money, but all have the same amount of time. If you won’t put in time on it, it’s not important to you and you’re just blowing smoke. It really is as simple as that. Do we really need to watch more reruns of Beverly Hillbillies? I mean, come on, think about it. The most valuable thing is our time. On what will I spend that valuable resource?
eJournal: You inspire me! That’s why I listen to Gun Talk Radio. I’m rarely near a radio when your show is broadcast, so the podcast really helps. For Network members to share this experience, how do they find out about you?
Gresham: It’s really easy. I’m glad you mentioned that because it is a radio show that runs on 270 radio stations around the country and is mostly live, but it then becomes a podcast you can listen to anytime you want. [grinning] You can go back and listen to years and years and years’ worth. Just look for Gun Talk – it’s on Spotify and YouTube and iTunes and all the other podcasting platforms. If you don’t do podcasts, go to YouTube where we have not only my show, but we also have several others from our studios down in Louisiana with Ryan and KJ and Chris Cerino and all the people there who do a fabulous job.
One thing, you don’t get to call in to a podcast. Gun Talk is live during the show on Sunday afternoons. If you have a question, a comment, or if you think I’m full of it, that’s fine we’ll have that conversation. I’ll give you the floor, you tell me why and support your argument. Find a station at https://www.guntalk.com/gun-talk-radio , tune in, and call us. Tom Talk Gun is the number; it’s pretty easy to remember. Tom Talk Gun.
eJournal: What fun! I’m so grateful for 30 years of Gun Talk. It’s a great mix of topics for gun collectors, shooting from training to plinking and hunting and pro-gun politics. On last weekend’s show, you stressed how hunters shouldn’t wait to get everything perfect; just take the shot when the cross hairs are on the animal.
Know what? I’m going to hear your voice at some point. Your voice is going to be in my head. I’m going to think, Tom said, just shoot it.
Gresham: How many times have you taught somebody to ignore the wobble on the sights and just keep pressing the trigger. If you try to make it perfect and line everything up and snatch the trigger, you’re going to pull it off target. You’ve taught that to so many people. It’s the exact same thing. The enemy of good is an attempt at perfect.
eJournal: A life lesson that applies across the board! Am I going to wait to comment on a fractious issue until I’ve got the perfect response? No, I’d better just say, “Well, no, in my opinion and my experience, so on and so forth.” Defeating hesitation is a great, great life skill.
Gresham: Right! Take the shot is actually a pretty good phrase to use for an awful lot of the things we do in life. Don’t put it off, don’t procrastinate, make the call, write the letter, get it done. If you didn’t do it great today, learn from it, and go do it better tomorrow.
eJournal: So very true. Tom, you inspire me. Thank you so much.
Gresham: It’s a pleasure. I so value your friendship and your counsel through all the years.
eJournal: You’ve definitely given more than you’ve taken over all these years.
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About our guest speaker: Tom Gresham created Gun Talk, the first national radio talk show about guns and gun rights in 1995, and it has grown to 270 radio stations and four million downloads of the show annually. Before Gun Talk, Tom became the editor of several outdoor magazines, and eventually joined his father Grits Gresham as co-host of ESPN’s Shooting Sports America. From that, Tom began hosting and creating several television series, including the first TV show about self defense with firearms. Learn more at https://www.guntalk.com/ .