Guns and Mental Health by Walk the Talk America

Sharyn works in IT by day, but by night she is a civil rights advocate, mental health proponent, and fits neatly in no boxes of any kind.  Prepare to have your worldview expanded.

IG: s.a.hinchcliffe
Twitter: @sacrebleu141

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Kevin Berry joins the Guns and Mental Health Podcast to discuss how social media is affecting our mental health. We also discuss how firearm content and individuals working in the industry are purposely suppressed on social media.

Kevin is a father of one and husband who enjoys getting outdoors and sports. He has been working in marketing for over seven years and started his small marketing agency in 2018 to help smaller businesses. He works in multiple areas, including advertising, branding, digital marketing, and website design. Kevin is passionate about educating people about marketing and social media. 

Follow Kevin on Twitter or LinkedIn

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David Yamane is Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. For the first 20 years of his academic career, he specialized in the sociology of religion, a field in which he authored, co-authored, or edited 6 books and 2 major scholarly journals. Since 2011, Professor Yamane has studied guns, especially the new self-defense oriented core of American gun culture that Michael Bane calls Gun Culture 2.0. Among his publications in this area is a short history of concealed carry in the U.S., Concealed Carry Revolution: Liberalizing the Right to Bear Arms in America, and a review essay on “The Sociology of US Gun Culture.”

As he continues to work on a book combining his personal experiences and sociological observations of Gun Culture 2.0, Professor Yamane shares his thoughts on two blogs, gunculture2point0.com and guncurious.com, and on Twitter at @davidyamane and @gunculture2pt0. In 2022, he launched a YouTube channel, “Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane,” on which he posts weekly short videos about issues related to his scholarship.

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Tony Simon is United States Marine Corps veteran, certified firearms instructor and certified range safety officer. He founded and hosts  the 2nd is For Everyone: Diversity Shoot and the 2nd is For Everyone podcast. 

The 2nd is for Everyone is dedicated to welcoming people of all races, religions, genders, sexual orientation and backgrounds into the firearms community, educating them on their civil rights and on the human right of self defense while introducing them to 2A advocacy organizations.

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Samantha is a practicing psychologist and professional counselor in West Virginia who actively writes for the NRA, along with being a certified firearms instructor. Living in both worlds gives her a unique perspective on both cultures and in this episode, she discusses the role and evolution of women in the gun community, the concept of "gun bunnies," and of course, mental health.

For those who are curious about how clinical practitioners handle suicidal firearms owners, this episode should help shed some light on the often-misunderstood process.

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Cam Edwards is the editor of BearingArms.com and the host of the long-running 2A show Cam & Co.  A husband and father of five, Cam grew up in a gun-free household before purchasing his first firearm for self-defense and defense of his family after he became a husband and insta-dad to two stepchildren almost 25 years ago. Since then, he's become passionate about ensuring access to the right to keep and bear arms, as well as making sure that gun owners have the tools they need to be safe and responsible. 

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Dylan Sessler is an author, mental health advocate, speaker, and US Army Veteran.  He survived parental suicide, PTSD, child abuse, bullying, war, life-changing injuries along with depression and anxiety. 

At one point Dylan was going to take his own life but (literally) wound up not pulling the trigger. Today he coaches others into better lifestyle choices and creates inspirational content for social media, YouTube, and also has his own podcast. With more than half a million subscribers on TikTok, Dylan has re-engineered his life into one of meaning, purpose, and encouragement.  

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Jesse Bugarin was raised in the Los Angeles area where homeowners owned guns for security reasons with little access or knowledge of safes to lock up their firearms.

He joined Cannon Security Products in 1989. During this time the company was small in volume and consumer reach. Jesse realized early on that safes were a necessary item for every home in America, which led to adopting “A SAFE IN EVERY HOME” as the company BHAG or, "Big Hairy Audacious Goal." 

The growth and success of the company has been attributed to promoting and environment where people are challenged to learn, grow, and contribute to society. He has dedicated his career to helping customers secure what they value, to help prevent injury or death by promoting education and providing product for proper gun storage, and working with retailers to make safes both accessible and affordable.

Throughout his 32-year career, he has held various executive management level roles with responsibilities in logistics, customer service, and in sales and marketing.

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What is Bipolar II Disorder and what does it have to do with this podcast?

For the past 15 years, Ashley Hlebinsky has been immersed in the study of firearms history, technology, and culture becoming one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the subject. Hlebinsky has researched and worked in several nationally recognized firearms and weapons collections, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Firearms Collection and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Cody Firearms Museum. For the past decade, she worked for and ran the Cody Firearms Museum, one of the largest and only accredited firearms museums in the country.

Ashley has accomplished a lot during her relatively short career - achieving all of these milestones before her 30th birthday. While many have described her as the "energizer bunny" and "overly passionate," juggling multiple high stress, high level projects, that level of energy is often punctuated with behind-the-scenes exhaustion and depression.

In November 2020 she finally made sense of the opposite sides to her life. Realizing that maybe it's not "normal" to have a full time job, build a museum, run a consulting business, as well as film an entire season of a TV show at the same time, she was ultimately diagnosed with Bipolar 2 disorder. 

Find Ashley at The Gun Code, on Instagram, on Facebook, or on Twitter.

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Deborah Alexander is the widow to the late Frank Alexander, former bodyguard for rapper Tupac Shakur. Frank was seemingly torn between two worlds and Deborah bore witness to all of the torment, joy, frustration, pain, triumph, and chaos that Frank endured, all the way through the moment where he took his own life - in front of Deborah, in their home - with his own gun.

Deborah's story is full of tears and hope, confusion and inspiration. She shares her story with us in an effort to improve awareness related to mental illness, firearms, and suicide. Her book, The Private Life of Big Frank: Bodyguard to the Greatest of Gangster Rap is available for purchase on Amazon. 

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