Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
Bringing together local businesses and neighbor of the Tri-Cities region. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Skip Mauney helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around The Tri-Cities.
Is your business serving the residents of Tri-Cities? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpTri-Cities.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 132: From Law Enforcement to Entrepreneurship: Sage Laisure Journey with Brothers in Arms Gun Shop
What makes Sage Laisure with Brothers in Arms Gun Shop a good neighbor?
Join us for an engaging conversation with Sage Laisure, the dynamic CEO of Brothers in Arms Gun Shop, located in the heart of Bluff City. Sage shares his fascinating journey from being a police officer in Baltimore County, Maryland, to embracing his passion for firearms in Tennessee, where he established a thriving family-owned business. Discover the unique services offered at his shop, including the intricate custom Cerakote process, which not only protects firearms but also allows endless creative customization. Sage provides a fresh perspective on the contrasting gun cultures between Maryland and Tennessee, and dispels common misconceptions about firearms as mere tools, emphasizing the importance of responsible ownership.
Celebrate the spirit of local entrepreneurship as we spotlight Brothers in Arms, a new cornerstone of the Bluff City community. Sage reflects on the challenges and triumphs of launching his business just a month ago. As a testament to community engagement, we're extending an open invitation to listeners to nominate their favorite local businesses for future episodes. Plus, a warm invitation for Sage to return in six months to share progress and new developments at Brothers in Arms. This episode is a testament to the importance of supporting local businesses and fostering strong community ties.
To learn more about Brothers in Arms go to:
https://www.brothersinarmstn.com/
Brothers in Arms Gun Shop
(410) 948-1336
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.
Speaker 2:Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast of the Tri-Cities. So we have a very special guest with us here today that I'm super excited to learn all about them and their organization, because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Mr Sage Lazor, who is the CEO of Brothers in Arms. Sage, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Well, we are thrilled to have you. Like I said, I am very curious to learn more about you and your organization. So, if you don't mind, why don't you kick us off by telling us about your business? What do you do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we are Brothers in Arms Gun Shop. We are a family-owned and run gun shop in Bluff City. We have guns, we have shooting equipment, we have, you know, if you like guns, then you can come in and I'm sure you'll find something that you like. We offer cerakote, custom cerakote for guns, and you know knives, handcuffs, you know tumblers. If you want to do a gift for somebody, we do. Uh, we do a bunch of custom stuff, but we are a gun shop very cool, very cool.
Speaker 2:Now, do you specialize in any particular kind of like handgun or rifle, anything like that?
Speaker 3:We don't specialize per se. A lot of my Cerakote stuff is done on the AR style firearm. That being said, we have a variety of you know hunting rifles, a variety of shotguns, a variety of rifles, handguns. We have, you know, from your smallest concealed carry to full-size you know competition shooting guns. So we have a very wide variety of guns here.
Speaker 2:Very cool, Very cool. Now the Cerakote. What exactly is that?
Speaker 3:Now the Cerakote. What exactly is that? So Cerakote is a ceramic film that gets put on guns. It pretty much is a protective coating. But the protective coating can come in you know so many different colors and camos and I like to do a lot of custom. You know crazy works. If somebody wants you know their favorite football team, put on a gun or you know certain words or whatever, you know their favorite football team put on a gun or you know certain words or whatever you know, that can be put on and usually it turns out pretty cool looking.
Speaker 2:So now is that where you you actually dip the gun down into a material so that's a hydro dip um that typically isn't as uh protective to the gun.
Speaker 3:Coating Ceramic or Cerakote is ceramic that actually gets air sprayed onto the gun and it gets put on in super thin layers, one millimeter thick at a time, and it actually gets thrown into an oven where it bakes on.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, so once it's on there, it's on there, it's on there. Yeah, so if I decided to surcoat my, I've got about a 30-year-old over and under shotgun with decorative stem on the side. I probably wouldn't want to do that. I wouldn't think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of the antiques, not saying that 30 is an. Yeah, a lot of the antiques not saying that .30 is an antique, but a lot of the older guns. People don't tend to cerakote that Now. That being said, if you have a gun that has been rusted or wasn't taken care of very well to where the bluing is coming off or to where an anodizing is coming off, I can take that, break it apart, get all that rust and all that bad stuff off and I can almost put a bluing colored serial code on top of it. That's an extra layer of protection.
Speaker 2:Hmm, hmm, I might be interested in that actually, because I've got, I've got way more rust on my gun that I'm, I'm. I'm ashamed to say that, but I haven't, haven't hunted in a while. So Sage, how did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:So I was a police officer for seven years in Baltimore County, maryland. I loved the job for a little bit but I really fell in love with firearms in general. I never grew up in a firearms family but when I became a police officer you know you kind of fall into the culture of who you're hanging out with and a lot of that culture is I love guns. So I just kind of fell in line. I started buying guns In Maryland. The gun laws are a lot stricter than anywhere else. I started buying guns in Maryland. The gun laws are a lot stricter than anywhere else. So you kind of get the ins and outs of the gun culture and gun world when you you have to kind of learn these laws and you start buying stuff and what you can't buy. And it was. It was definitely a fun experience, kind of falling in love with something for the first time and you know that's what it is. It's a love of firearms. You know they have a lot of bad rap but they can be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. So the difference between Maryland and Tennessee, I guess Second Amendment support is a little different. Yeah, just a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit, just a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit, just a little bit. Well, that's cool, that's why I love Tennessee man. So what are some myths or misconceptions in the firearm business? I'm sure there's a lot.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you know all the, all the negative ones. All the guns kill people and guns are dangerous. It's you know guns don't walk up to somebody and choose to kill them or shoot them or whatever. It's you know the person's the dangerous one, just like you know, when you go to a car dealership do they ask you hey, do you plan on hurting anybody with this vehicle, or it's you know A gun is used as a tool, just like anything else can be.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. Anything else come to mind. I mean, that's probably the biggest, I would think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that's, you know, especially with all the new legislative, you know people trying to make a name for themselves, trying to ban guns, and it's, yeah, that's the number one thing. I go to that. And you know they say school shootings and all that other stuff. It's you know, there's all the school shootings, that's you can't technically buy a gun until you're 18, and then you can buy a long gun. You can't buy a handgun until you're 21. So if somebody 15, 14, you know 16, even 17 has access to a gun, they're getting it from somebody that should hopefully, you know, either keep it away from that person if they can sense something's wrong, or they should just know. Hopefully they would know better and know that guns can be dangerous. But they have to be given to the wrong person for them to be dangerous responsible parenting.
Speaker 2:Imagine that that's what. Yeah, that that could stop a lot of this stuff. And you know there's a comedian I was listening to the other night. They said you know what happened to crazy? It's like all of a sudden crazy just went away. You know that that's got, that's a factor in a lot of this. This stuff is crazy, is crazy people. You know that exists, but anyway that's.
Speaker 3:I won't get into all that, but and there was, you know, there was a time you know it's before my time probably, but I think, uh, and the police can only do so much but it used to be that kids, or, you know, teenagers, were more scared of their parents than they were the police, you know, and that's not a thing anymore.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Well, Sage, outside of work, what do you do for fun? I spend a lot of time with my family. I have two little kids, so we, you know, playing with my, you know my kids, watching them grow up. That was another thing of I was blessed to have this job and not the police job was the strenuous hours of police work and stuff. I really didn't get to spend time with my kids and now they can come here and hang out with me or I spend a lot of time with them at home or going out to a playground or something. But I love spending time with my family.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Best answer is spend time with family, especially if your wife watches the podcast. So if Sage, do you guys have a shooting range or anything?
Speaker 3:We do not have a shooting range. The property that we are in was actually annexed by Bristol City not too long ago, so we were kind of restricted on some property that we have right now. That is something that we would love to get to in the future. We would love to put on a Even though Tennessee is a constitutional carry state now, where you don't require any law, we do want to get into the handgun carry safety classes and stuff like that, and having a range would be awesome for that. So down the line, just not right now.
Speaker 2:Just not right now. Very cool, Very cool. Well, and you guys still. You said you've been in business now for a little over a year.
Speaker 3:We've actually only been open for about three to four weeks. Oh, wow, oh you're very fresh. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Very cool, very cool. Well, sage, I appreciate you taking time to be with us today, but one other question I wanted to ask was if there's one thing you would like our listeners to remember about Brothers in Arms, what would that be?
Speaker 3:Don't be afraid to come in and ask questions. You know a lot of gun shops that you go into you might have some grumpy people that don't or act like they don't have time for something that's new to firearms. But I'm here to get people into firearms. You know there's a lot of people that are scared because you know they only hear the negatives and they really don't know how fun guns can be. You know taking your gun to the range and shooting and you know shooting out to some yardage or just doing some drills and stuff that can be really fun, but some people just are too afraid. So if you come in here you will always get smiles.
Speaker 3:You know I don't act like I know everything when it comes to firearms. So if there's something that, even if you know that I don't know, I would love to talk to you. You know some people come into the shop and they talk to me for an hour and they end up don't buying anything. You know which is OK. You know I love the conversation, but you will always get that friendly conversation about guns with me. It's. You know I don't act like I know more than anybody else or you know you shouldn't feel embarrassed to not know stuff. Come in and have a conversation. You know I'll talk to you, for you know, till we close.
Speaker 2:I love talking about guns well, I'm sure I'm sure that's an issue for people like me. I mean, sometimes I'm embarrassed that my son is really into hunting and into handguns as well for fun. I don't know crap about handguns or assault rifles. I'm a shotgun kind of guy. I love to bird hunt and I love five stand and sporting clays and that sort of thing. But I'm definitely an enthusiast, so I can.
Speaker 3:You said the term assault rifle. That's another bad notion of the gun community is the AR-15 does not stand for assault rifle. It stands for Arma Light Rifle, which is the ar-15 does not stand for assault rifle. It stands for arma light rifle, which is the first. You know it's a company that made the first patent for the ar-15 style gun. So ar does not stand for assault rifle.
Speaker 2:That's one thing that people should get to know, if they don't know already that that, yeah, that that is definitely a misconception, because even you know every newscast when something happens or somebody gets shot and they say oh, it was an assault-style rifle, like an.
Speaker 1:AR-15 kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's just totally ignorant. So we'll try to straighten that out with this podcast and get people to know what that really stands for Armalite. Is that what you said? Yep that's the company that makes it. Armalite. That's the name of the company. There you go, well, very good. Well, sage, if those are like me, are interested in coming in checking out what you got and talking about guns with you, how can our listeners learn more?
Speaker 3:We have a website, it is brothersinarmstncom.
Speaker 1:Very cool.
Speaker 3:We are working on getting our Facebook back. The Facebook gods deem that they don't like firearms very much. We are working on getting that back.
Speaker 2:I understand, I understand, I understand, Although you know I just read that Mark Zuckerberg is loosening the reins. Now that you know we've got different leadership coming, I think a lot's going to change on social media, which is a positive thing for sure.
Speaker 3:But we are on Google. If you just Google Brothers in Arms gun shop, we should pop up. We're in bluff city. We're right across the street from pit row gas station.
Speaker 2:Well, sage, again, you don't know how much we appreciate you being on the show and congratulations on getting brothers in arms rocking and rolling in the last month or so, and we wish you and your family and brothers in arms all the best moving forward. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, absolutely, and maybe, maybe we can get you back on when you've about six months down the road and you got some other stuff going on. Yeah perfect, all right, sounds good.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnp try dash citiescom. That's gnp try dash citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.