by Andy Marcantel, Rachel Moss and Dianna Muller
Rachel Moss (00:04):
Hello everyone. Attorneys on retainer is officially at goals. Yes. We are here with Gun Owners of America. It is Andy Marcantel and Rachel Moss. And we are sitting down with Dianna Mueller. We are so excited to have you on. Dianna Mueller is a great individual who is a competitive shooter, a Second Amendment advocate, and so much more. So can you start today, Dianna, by just telling us a little bit more about yourself?
Dianna Muller (00:28):
Sure. I am a retired police officer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I did 22 years there and I kind of retired early to pursue a second career. I turned a hobby into a career and now I am a professional three gun shooter. We shoot rifles, pistols, and shotguns. My rifle sponsor is right beside us, Daniel Defense. And I also have another hat that is a pretty big hat. It is the Women for Gun Rights. I'm the founder of Women for Gun Rights and we are a Second amendment advocacy group that is safe using the women's voice to safeguard the second Amendment.
Rachel Moss (00:59):
That's great. How did you get involved with Women for Gun Rights?
Dianna Muller (01:02):
Well, I didn't get involved with it. It got involved with me, my husband and I and the Mitchell Lick. I don't know if you know that name. From the competitive shooting, he's kind of our Michael Jordan. We travel with them a lot and we were on the East Coast for some matches close to Washington DC and a friend of mine that lives there and does a lot of advocacy work herself said, do you want to meet your legislator? And from that meeting, it was really a light bulb moment like, Hey, is there something that we should be doing as gun owners to educate the people, our legislators that are making some really misinformed decisions? So that's where it started. And now we are a nationwide organization of women, moms, daughters, grandmas, victims, survivors saying that we want to be, we know we are safer with our firearms, not that we feel safe because firearms are removed from the equation. We know that's not the case.
Rachel Moss (01:54):
Definitely. And I know I myself actually joined Women for Gun Rights last year, similar situation where someone else kind of got me into it. Actually one of our attorneys for Freedom Employees, Sarah Riggle, got me involved and it's been really great because I think a lot of people don't realize all the options they have available to them to affect gun legislation. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Dianna Muller (02:16):
Well, I think what gun owners may not understand is that there is a concerted effort to disarm America. They may tell you that it's not, but there is definitely a movement and they're putting a lot of money behind it. They have an organization called Moms Demand Action. It's a Bloomberg funded $60 million a year group that is working to undermine the constitution and take away our guns. So I think that that's the issue is that you'd have to know the enemy per se to understand why it's so important to have a counter voice and a counter visual to that. I always say that the Women for Gun Rights is kind of like a marketing division because gun Owners of America, NRA, firearms Policy Coalition, second Amendment Foundation, they're all doing fantastic work on their membership with litigation, but our side doesn't really do a good job with the visual and the marketing and the optics like the other side does. So that's kind of the hole that we're trying to fill in. And it's free to join Women for Gun Rights, women for gun rights.org and we would love to have all the membership, all the support that we can get,
Andy Marcantel (03:19):
The marketing and the optics of groups like Mom's Demand Action always seems pretty sinister to me.
Dianna Muller (03:24):
Well, it's very organized and it's very well funded. It's intentional. If they don't have 200 people that they want, they're going to hire 200 people that they want, they're going to put 'em on a bus and they're going to ship them to the Supreme Court and they're going to get the visual that they need to influence the rest of America. And that's where I feel like we are lacking.
Andy Marcantel (03:41):
Yeah, I say it's sinister. I use that term because when I think of the imagery that they use, it's usually in the wake of some sort of a school shooting or some sort of a tragedy and they parade The moms out there and they play on probably the most those parental instincts of wanting to protect your children and everything like that. They play upon those types of themes and imagery in order to try to get legislation passed.
Dianna Muller (04:07):
Absolutely. And they also, they're a very bullish group. They're demanding. So we try to be a little bit more above the fray and make relationships and try to understand, and I would love to have an audience with Mom's Demand Action. I think they honestly do not understand. They've never heard another side from a woman they've never heard. They don't own tragedy. We have women in our group that have been through the exact same things that they're using to push gun control and they're saying, no, no, no. That does not make me safer. Disarming me does not make me safer.
Andy Marcantel (04:44):
Yeah. We have a paralegal, Lauren Snyder, and she's a Second Amendment activist, and it all stemmed out. She spoke about this many times on our podcast. It all stemmed out of an incident where she was in a gun-free zone and she wasn't allowed to bring a firearm there. And lo and behold, she was attacked and defenseless and very, very closely. It almost turned out really bad and that's what started her down that path. I'm sure there's a million other stories like that.
Dianna Muller (05:09):
Yes, there are. And that's what our goal is, just to organize those women and tell their stories.
Rachel Moss (05:15):
It's interesting that you brought up that the fact that the other side often does play on emotions, but our side really has emotional stories as well, and I think it's hard. It's difficult to talk about, but something I always bring up is the fact that the reason you don't always hear these stories is because a lot of women just aren't around anymore to talk about it. They were in a situation where they were unfortunately unable to defend themselves, did not have a firearm, and they are not able to talk about it because they're just no longer with us. And that's really heartbreaking to hear about those stories and I feel like Women for Gun Rights does a good job of really platforming women that can share their survivor stories and share that if they not had an option to defend themselves, that it could have been a lot different.
Dianna Muller (06:02):
Absolutely. And this weekend Nikki er will be here, and you may know her story, but another story of being in a gun-free zone and her husband were karaoke producers and they were at a place that didn't allow guns and they left theirs in the car and her stalker came in and shot her husband like six times and killed him in front of everybody. And she wrote a book called Stocked and Defenseless and it is just tragic and there's story after story and thank you for highlighting those stories because that's another thing that the mainstream media are not going to highlight. I think that they're in bed with the people who are trying to disarm America, so they're not going to highlight the almost 2 million saves that the CDC originally said that guns are capable of.
Andy Marcantel (06:48):
That's just the case in general when it comes to incidents involving firearms. We only hear about the ones that are sensationalized are the ones that end in tragedy and whenever there's a good guy with a gun that stops a bad guy from doing, I feel like that's out of the news cycle in a day.
Dianna Muller (07:04):
They definitely have a
Rachel Moss (07:04):
Narrative that they want to push.
Andy Marcantel (07:06):
Yeah,
Rachel Moss (07:06):
That's so true. You always hear about an officer involved shooting when it results in the death of the individual the officer was arresting, but you never hear about the times when officers use their firearms to really protect the public and step in dangerous situations. So there really is that kind of bias in the media right now around firearms.
Dianna Muller (07:26):
Yeah. Well, and that's one of the things we talked about was training, and that's why it's important I think for gun owners. This is a podcast for gun owners and it's important for you to train and I would highly recommend the competitive shooting sports. There's a myriad of different ones and a lot of them, well, IDPA is definitely a concealed carry. That's not my sport, but I've done it before. But there are pistol games, there are rifle games, there are three gun games. What I do, and I think that all of the competition will only give you that time and that intimacy with your firearm that if you ever had to use it in real life, that it would exponentially increase your chances of survival, your decision-making skills, everything that goes into that deadly force scenario. I think that competitive shooting is definitely a plus.
Rachel Moss (08:21):
So pretend we know nothing about it. If you had to explain to our viewers what is a three gun shooting competition?
Dianna Muller (08:28):
So Three Gun is kind of like the X Games of the shooting sports love it. We're running around with three different platforms. Sometimes I've got a rifle strapped to my back starting with a shotgun with pistol on my side, but there are games that are just one gun. So there's U-S-P-S-A and IDPA that are just one gun pistol. There are long range games. It just really goes on and on. There's, of course the Olympics just got over and they're sporting plays and trap really don't know which sporting plays. That's not my gig either. People see me in this shirt and they're like, you're sponsored by Benelli and you must be able to go to sporting. And I go to sporting clays and I get 10 out of a hundred. It's tough. Totally different game.
Rachel Moss (09:10):
Well, you're probably better than me at Sporting Clay. It was never my strong suit. So was it your law enforcement background that led you into competitive
Dianna Muller (09:19):
Shooting? No, my dad got me into competitive shooting when I was a teenager. He took me hunting for a couple of seasons and I was not, I don't like to sit still. I don't really care to kill things. I love to eat them, but I don't like to kill 'em. I didn't like to do the frog thing in science class. I liked the body how it's packaged,
Rachel Moss (09:40):
So
Dianna Muller (09:41):
That wasn't my thing. And then dad turned our attention to U-S-P-S-A pistol game.
Andy Marcantel (09:46):
That's awesome.
Dianna Muller (09:46):
Yeah.
Andy Marcantel (09:47):
How long were you a police officer for?
Dianna Muller (09:48):
22 years in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tulsa Police Department. It was great.
Andy Marcantel (09:52):
So you really liked being a cop. It seems like whenever we talk to police officers, I have a friend who's a lawyer, he used to be a police officer too, and he's like, oh, out of the two jobs I loved being a cop. Do you feel the same way?
Dianna Muller (10:03):
Oh yeah. It was a great job. I feel like again, society and our, what's going on in our society is kind of undermining the police. I am concerned as a former police officer, I'm concerned of the police officers that are being indoctrinated to be more like Gestapo and Nazi ish and not follow the Constitution. So I have a big heart for back the blue, but I also see the concern with where we're going with if and when they ever want to flip that switch and use the federal government. You've seen it from what's going on with the FBI and the CIA and the federal agencies right now. You're seeing how they're politicized and very much targeting specific people.
Andy Marcantel (10:46):
It's tough to be a cop right now.
Dianna Muller (10:48):
Oh, I wouldn't want to do it right now. It was great back then and I actually retired 2014 when that was the summer of Hands up, don't shoot the kid in St. Louis. That turned out to be a total lie, but they've spread that. You just put that lie out there and then you might want to change it here in a week or three years. I think it took for the truth to come out and the damage is done. So that's a black eye on police when it really wasn't. And then you've got the Chauvin case in Minnesota and the George Floyd and how everybody handled that and you were right. I mean that was intentionally sensationalized.
Andy Marcantel (11:28):
Absolutely.
Dianna Muller (11:29):
They pick and choose. I believe they pick and choose what they're going to blow up. And the older I get, the more I step back and I'm seeing like this is like Truman's world. Yeah, the whole thing.
Rachel Moss (11:40):
Do you feel like the greater attention on what the media often labels as police brutality affects the way that officers do their job?
Dianna Muller (11:47):
I think that especially in administrations and cities that are highly toxic, defund the police, they're going to be very liberal in their policies and they're going to be soft on crime. And it does undermine the rule of law. It undermines what the police do and it has to affect what they do. They can either go out and patrol and protect your community and look for bad guys, or they can sit behind Lowe's and get the same amount of pay. So you're going to have to make a decision on do you want to complain about they're not doing anything or do you want to complain about that they are doing something. So it's really a lose situation for them.
Andy Marcantel (12:29):
Yeah, I've seen this rise of hostility in recent years from both sides of the political aisle towards police officers. As you pointed out, we got the defund, the police, all cops are bastards movement coming from the left. And then we have coming from the right, a kind of a growing skepticism that maybe these are the people, they're kind of being indoctrinated by a gun grabbing administration and they're basically acting like the Gestapo. I'm seeing this rise from both sides of kind of hostility towards the police. That's why I say it must be tough to be a, I don't know why you would want to at this
Dianna Muller (13:00):
Time, not these days, but I appreciate and a applaud the people who do, because if you want to complain about how the cops are, then you need to be a cop in your local. This is a local issue. You certainly do not want to completely undermine the local and state law enforcement because then what are we going to have then at some point something's going to happen and they're going to want the police there. And who's the only person that has respect blue hats of the un? I can go down so many different rabbit holes about how the destabilization of America, what I'm seeing and what I'm concerned about, but it's definitely true that there's a left and there's a totally different skepticisms.
Andy Marcantel (13:43):
Yeah, it's interesting right now.
Dianna Muller (13:44):
And then the people who are wanting to defund the police are like, trust the police, defund the police and take your guns away. That just doesn't make any sense at all.
Andy Marcantel (13:53):
Some hypocrisy there for sure.
Dianna Muller (13:56):
Doesn't seem like an equation that I would want to live in.
Andy Marcantel (13:59):
Yeah, yeah. Couldn't agree more.
Rachel Moss (14:00):
Andy and I are, as attorneys on retainer, are involved in the self-defense game. So something I think about with officers when you had to respond to a shooting or a self-defense situation, is there certain things you'd look for to determine if it was likely a self-defense case or not?
Dianna Muller (14:19):
Well, I can say that one of the things that I know is of concern and has been a problem is that when police, you've just used your firearm and and then the police come and how do they know that you're the good guy and not the bad guy? And there have been instances of good guys getting shot. So I think there's definitely things to train on there of how you want to perceive, get yourself perceived after a shooting. And one of the things I think the LAPD came out of many years ago was that they would put their gun in Sewell, put their gun away, and then hold their badge up or hold their hand up because bad guys aren't going to hold their hand up. So that's kind of what, if I see police, I'm going to do something along those lines that a bad guy wouldn't be doing.
Dianna Muller (15:05):
But I can tell you from personal experience, here's a quick story. My rookie's driving. I'm in the passenger seat and we're in a very bad neighborhood and we hear pop, pop, pop, and we see a kid run from the back of the building with a gun towards another convenience store. So we both jump out and we have to clear the corner where it came from before we could go after him. So when we clear the corner, I see one black male on top of another black male. And I cannot tell you, it took me a nanosecond to understand that the guy on top was a good guy and the guy on the bottom was a bad guy and that I should go after this guy. And I honestly can't tell you what it was
Andy Marcantel (15:47):
That was going to be my next question is how'd you put it? Just that cop instinct.
Dianna Muller (15:53):
And I've heard other situations of people in malls when they're shooting in malls, there are people that don't know each other that are communicating because they understand that they are good guys. So I think there's an element to that. I don't think that that works all of the time, but there's definitely an instinct in you reading a situation and reading people that works.
Andy Marcantel (16:14):
Yeah, always when we're talking to our clients about how not to get shot, we try to give them some practical advice. We remind them, Hey, all the cop who's responding to the scene knows this. There's just been an incident. Somebody's got a gun, somebody's got a gun, they want to go home that night. And so we try to give as much practical advice as we can. What would you tell people if they're involved in this situation? Cops are on the way. What would you want to see
Dianna Muller (16:41):
As a police officer or as a civilian
Andy Marcantel (16:43):
Or both? Yeah,
Dianna Muller (16:44):
Like I said, my plan is to, if I am in that scenario, my plan is to A, I'm not going to be pointing my gun up at anybody. I'll be having it down and I'll probably raise my hand and start talking to people and start communicating that, Hey, this guy just did this. I had to defend my whatever. Now tell me what I should say. What's the next step? What should I say when I talk to the police?
Andy Marcantel (17:12):
Probably nothing. Almost certainly the answer from any criminal defense attorney is going to be just shut up. And once again, every cop that I knows follows that tells their kids don't talk to the police. Right. I'm sure you've had many cases as a cop where somebody just started talking
Dianna Muller (17:28):
And Well, you don't want to talk too much, but I think that you need to give them, and you guys can tell me your opinion. I think you need to give them the morsel of they're there to figure out what happened. And if you don't help at least point them in the right direction, good guy, bad guy, he did this and then shut up, then I think it makes you look a little bit suspicious.
Andy Marcantel (17:48):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And our position is every case is a case by case basis. This is one of the reasons why we have our emergency 24 7 hotline. It's like there's no one piece of general advice you can give that covers everything. You should always talk to an attorney and see, but generally speaking, less is more in these things, right? Yes,
Dianna Muller (18:07):
Absolutely.
Andy Marcantel (18:08):
We understand that it can make you get arrested that night, but the big fight is stopping the criminal charge later on. And generally speaking, the more you say, the more doors you're closing for your defense attorney to defend you later on. But you can beat the rat. You can't beat the ride. Right. So the idea is that, okay, well if you're going to get arrested because you look suspicious at the moment, the more important thing is not going to prison for shooting somebody unlawfully. But we always tell people, first of all, don't have the gun in your hand when the cops are responding to the scene. Don't have the gun in your hand. And basically, like you said, just look as compliant as possible, hands in clear display, maybe even on your knees or on the ground or something like that that doesn't indicate that you're going to run. And yeah, I mean, would you agree with that
Dianna Muller (18:53):
Advice? Yeah, as long as you feel like the threat is over, I would put my gun away if I knew for certain that the threat was over. Hopefully I wouldn't look like the secret service agent trying to get my gun back in my holster. But that's why competition shooting is important is because you know where your holster is and you get those repetitions. So
Rachel Moss (19:14):
Yeah. So would you say then that your competitive shooting career has helped you if you were to be in a self-defense situation?
Dianna Muller (19:21):
Absolutely. I know I can give you another quick story. As I was training down in Waft, my favorite training facility in Orlando, and I was going in a house kind of in the house rescuing my kid, my fake kid that was screaming in the background, but there was obviously people in the house. So I'd made the decision to go ahead and go in and I made the mistake of not checking the chamber of this gun that I just, it's a UTM gun, so I didn't check the chamber. So I knew and I took a shot. As I was coming across the room, I took a shot at somebody and I knew that it was dead. And it took me a nanosecond again to understand what was going on with my gun, what I needed to do to get it back into play. And then I continued on. There was no hiccup at all. And if you don't have that kind of experience, then you're like, you're kind of deer in the headlights and you're on your heels and you're dead.
Andy Marcantel (20:18):
Yeah.
Dianna Muller (20:18):
So I definitely think that the shooting sports helps me make decisions, helps me understand my platforms that I use, and I love it. Anybody has any questions? They can holler at me. Die Mueller on Instagram or Facebook? Dianna Mueller three gun.
Rachel Moss (20:34):
Do you have a favorite memory from competition?
Dianna Muller (20:36):
Oh man. I love competition. And one of probably my favorite memories is I've gone to three world shotgun Championships and being internationally, it's like our Olympics. It's as close as we're going to get to the Olympics because our sport isn't in there. It's an action based shotgun sport. So we're running around and loading and doing all of the running gun stuff, but I've gotten silver individual medals in two of those, and then gold with the team two times. So standing on a podium and hearing your national anthem because of Lena Ick that won the individual and then our team hearing the national anthem, it's absolutely what you would think it would be. It's
Andy Marcantel (21:22):
Got to be a huge moment of pride. Where was that competition or where have you traveled for competition?
Dianna Muller (21:27):
In Italy, France, and then just recently Thailand.
Andy Marcantel (21:30):
That's awesome.
Rachel Moss (21:31):
That's really cool. Do you think your competition should be added to the Olympics?
Dianna Muller (21:36):
I do. When we talk about it, the International Pistol Confederation ips, I is the International Pistol Shooting Confederation. We don't say it a lot like that. ips I is the international body and they would be the ones that would take it to the Olympics. So we talk to them about it and hey, what do we need to do to do it? And evidently there's talks about it, but it's tough. It's an uphill battle because the world, they're trying to make guns and gun owners bad and remove guns. But we're going to keep pushing.
Andy Marcantel (22:14):
The Olympics was this summer, obviously, and whenever the Olympics comes on, there's always, I realize how many crazy obscure sports are actually Olympic sports.
Dianna Muller (22:23):
Yeah, that break dancing. Maybe we
Andy Marcantel (22:24):
Could, I think of break dancing. Maybe we
Dianna Muller (22:25):
Could replace break dancing. Come on LA 2028. Yeah, bring it back to the us.
Andy Marcantel (22:32):
Well, I think what you do is so important. I know we're at the end of our time that we got with you, but the way that I see it, there's different levels to firearms ownership and what you're doing is amazing on all of the levels that I think are so important. I think the most important thing is protecting against the tyrannical government and the tyrannical society. And so just you encouraging half of the human race women to be get more involved in understanding those rights and understanding the importance of it, I think is commendable.
Dianna Muller (23:01):
Well, thank you. I think it is going to take the women and minority voices to make guns great again, to steal somebody else's phrases. But for your audience, I say all the time that it's up to us to have those conversations. It's up to us to prepare ourselves for those conversations. It's kind of like being a Christian. If I don't know how to talk to people about Christ, I can't witness for Christ. If I don't know how to talk about America, I can't witness for America. If I don't know how to talk about the Second Amendment, I can't witness for the Second Amendment. So we have a download on our landing page, women for the gun rights.org, and it has a two-Way talking points. Basically effective communication. If anybody is going for an interview or going to sit down at the Thanksgiving table and they want to say, why do we oppose universal background checks? Why do we oppose red flag laws? They can download that. And just little refresher sheets. There are reasons
Rachel Moss (23:52):
Everyone should go check that out for sure. I know you've mentioned a few places where people could find you, but is there anywhere else that you wanted to tell her if you were about where to find you online?
Dianna Muller (24:01):
Women for Gun Rights is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, XI think that's about it. And then I'm on the same three platforms. So just Mueller on Instagram and Dianna Mueller, three Gun on Facebook. And then Women for Gun Rights is just spelled out, women for Gun Rights.
Rachel Moss (24:19):
Perfect. Well everyone go give Dianna follow. It's been really great to sit down with you today. I feel like I learned a lot about three gun shooting, and it's really cool to hear that law enforcement perspective as well. So everyone, go ahead and check us out on Attorneys on retainer us, as well as attorneys for freedom.com. Learn all about the Attorneys on retainer program and get to know the lawyers at our law firm like me and Andy. Thank you all for tuning in today and go ahead and like, comment, follow, and subscribe, and we're so excited to be here at Goals in Tennessee.
Andy Marcantel (24:51):
Peace.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnauwK3P5GI
Credit: Dianna Muller, Attorneys On Retainer