On Monday's show, we met an author who’s troubled by what he describes as an enduring American myth: the tough guy with the gun who can fix everything. Jim Fuller, founder and owner of Fuller Phoenix, joined The Show to introduce a different perspective on that story.
Full conversation
JIM FULLER: This is my personal favorite gun — I built this gun about 12 years ago. It’s named after our family dog Buster. He died one night — we had him for 16 years. It was devastating. That night I couldn’t sleep, so I went to the shop and built this. Been my main gun ever since.
SAM DINGMAN: I’m at the offices of Fuller Phoenix. Fuller makes AK-47 rifles. I’m sitting in the conference room with the owner of the company, Jim Fuller.
FULLER: See it’s clear —this is a new design that we’ve been working on. We’re real proud of it. You know what the name of this gun is? It’s called the F-Bomb.
DINGMAN: Jim’s in his 70s — thin and wiry, with spikey silver hair. Most of the gun owners I’ve met are recreational shooters. They like to go target shooting, or they like to hunt. But that’s not why Jim Fuller builds AK-47s.
FULLER: We don’t really build guns for hunting. We build guns for fighting with. And we’re proud of that. Because it’s a realistic thing.
DINGMAN: The AK-47 isn’t a hunting gun or a target shooting gun. It’s a battlefield gun.
FULLER: These guns were never intended to be super accurate. They were intended to be combat effective.
DINGMAN: First built in the Soviet Union after World War II, the AK-47 is an automatic rifle that can shoot a lot of rounds really fast. Jim’s always been a gun guy, but growing up, he didn’t know about the AK.
FULLER: When I was a kid, everybody had a rifle — everybody had a walnut gun cabinet, with their guns displayed in the living room. I used to take my .22 to school so we could all go plinking after school. It was always a lot of fun — nobody thought of shooting another kid — that was what fights behind the gymnasium were for.
DINGMAN: Jim didn’t discover the AK until the 1980s. He was in his 20s, working as an electrician in El Salvador. It was the height of the Salvadoran Civil War, and one day he and his crew were walking through the jungle.
FULLER: One of the guys found an AK, buried in a mud puddle. Had a mag in it. One of the guy that was there says “I know that gun, lemme see that thing.” Pulls the mag out, says, “This thing is loaded.” He walked over into the jungle, pointed it into the jungle, runs the bolt, and proceeds to rip the whole mag off. I’m looking at this thing, it’s rusted, it’s covered with mud, first thing in my mind is “When I get back, I’m gonna get me one of those.”
DINGMAN: A few years later, Jim was living in California with his wife and kids.
FULLER: It was really actually the ‘92 riots in LA. And that really changed my mind about owning firearms for self defense.
DINGMAN: Jim’s referring to the aftermath of a trial involving four police officers who were caught on tape physically assaulting a Black man. When the officers were acquitted, violence broke out across the city. Around this time, Jim says, there was a “camping incident” near his house.
FULLER: Because of the fact my wife and I were both heavily armed, some people were deterred. Something bad might’ve happened that day had we not been armed. And we didn’t have to fire a round to do anything. It was just a, “Oh. Let’s go somewhere else.”
DINGMAN: This, Jim says, is the moment he “got serious.” He’d seen the power of the AK first-hand, but he knew that most people thought of it as an industrial military weapon — not a gun for their personal collection. So he decided to start making them himself.
FULLER: The AK has a lot of faults about it — it’s not really human-friendly. They have a lot of sharp edges on ‘em, the sights aren’t that great. There’s a lot of things that could be done, and I begin to think — oh, you know, maybe I could fix that. And it’s like, “Oh, that worked. Maybe I’ll try this! Oh, that didn’t work.” Guess I better run down and buy a new one. I screwed up a few of them learning how to work on them.
DINGMAN: Eventually, Jim got good enough at building AKs that he left his job as an electrician and started selling them. And early on, he noticed that some of his customers didn’t want their friends to know that they were buying a gun. Part of his goal is to normalize self-defense.
FULLER: Today, with all the things you got goin’ on in this world right now … I carry a gun every day. You don’t leave home without it. When I get up and get dressed in the morning, it’s no different than putting my phone or my wallet in my pocket. I stick my gun in my pants. I buy my pants a size bigger just so it fits better.
DINGMAN: If you’re comfortable saying, have you ever had to use any of your guns?
FULLER: No. And I hope I never do.
DINGMAN: According to Jim, these days, demand for AKs is through the roof. He’s got a 500 person waiting list, and he gets new customers every day — people who tell him they never thought they’d buy a gun.
FULLER: Churches … schools. We get a lot of inquiries from teachers who are going to be carrying guns for the first time because some schools are allowing them now. One of my own family members was doing it, and I couldn’t be more proud of her in that. It’s just sad that we have a world like this now, you know?
DINGMAN: But to hear Jim tell it, gun owners can still save the world.
FULLER: I truly believe that gun ownership in this country is one of the reasons why we haven’t been invaded. Or worse.
DINGMAN: He points to a flag hanging on the wall behind me.
FULLER: That flag flew over the general’s tent on Iwo Jima. That’s serious stuff right there. This stuff means a lot to us. You know, the warrior creed. I was raised by WWII generation people, and I will die with that mindset. It just hurts my heart sometimes when I think about this stuff. We shouldn’t be like this — we really shouldn’t.
DINGMAN: Were your parents in the war?
FULLER: No, unfortunately my dad was murdered when I was pretty young. So I never had that influence.
DINGMAN: I’m very sorry to hear about your dad, too. To whatever extent you’re comfortable talking about it, does that inform your relationship to personal defense?
FULLER: Yeah, because there wasn’t a dad around all the time. You know? There wasn’t. And I was an idiot when I was younger because there wasn’t a guy around to kick my ass when I was doin’ stupid shit.
DINGMAN: Things might’ve taken a darker turn for Jim if he hadn't started playing the guitar when he was a teenager. When he heard Led Zeppelin’s first record, his life changed.
FULLER: My neighbor got that album and I said, “Oh my god, I’ve never heard music like this before!” And I sat there with a cheap little guitar that we had layin’ around the house — I just destroyed that record movin’ the arm back and forth, back and forth, and I basically taught myself how to play with that record. I became good enough that I was able to support myself for probably a good five, 10 years just playin’ in nightclubs when I was young. And I credit that for not taking a bad path in life, because I had something I could do.
DINGMAN: I have to say Jim, there’s such an interesting overlap between the way you just talked about learning to play Zeppelin songs on the guitar, and learning how to work on AKs.
FULLER: Yeah, there was nobody there to teach me. So I had to learn myself.