Jake and Mike sit down with Ashley Hlebinsky to talk about how the gun debate almost killed her and what it was like being caught in the middle of it all as an expert witness after the Supreme Court Bruen decision. Ashley will also touch on how she made it through losing a service animal, especially one that was there exclusively to mitigate mental health illnesses.
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. During her tenure as Curator, she was also the Project Director overseeing the full-scale multi-million-dollar renovation of the museum. It reopened in 2019 and has been praised for its role in the education of firearms and safety, as well as being a museum that does not shy away from uncomfortable topics to encourage civil dialogue on all aspects of firearms history and their impacts today.
