by Marty Hayes, J.D.
Here at the Network’s home office, we are busily preparing for the NRA Annual Meeting May 20-22 in Louisville, KY. Read all about it in our VP’s column on page 9. We designed and had a new booth back wall produced to attract the attention of even the most tired show attendees.
Members, when attending the show be sure to stop by and say hi to Gila, Vincent and me. Non-members reading this should know that we will be offering a discount on new memberships sold at the show, so if you have been sitting on the fence about joining, do it at the NRA Annual Meeting. I hope to see you there.
New Goals Met
We recently surpassed 11,000 members in the Network, and have reached the three quarters of a million dollar figure in the Legal Defense Fund. Next time we report back about the membership growth and Legal Defense Fund it will be when we have a million dollars! That should occur sometime in 2017. (Did I just set a goal?)
Who Comprises the Network?
At a recent precision rifle course held at my range, I snapped a picture of the Network’s Melissa DeYoung, lying in the dirt shooting very small groups a long way away. That got me thinking of the type of people of which the Network is comprised.
We are shooters first and foremost. We shoot guns (and don’t tell anyone, okay, but we really enjoy it)! We train hard to be skilled with whatever type of firearm we use, whether is it is a long range rifle so Melissa can cleanly harvest large game, or our personal self-defense handgun, so if that time comes we have to take it out and use it to save our lives, we do not risk the lives of innocent bystanders. While that applies to each member of our operations team, I also know it applies to the advisory board members, Massad Ayoob, John Farnam, Tom Givens, Manny Kapelsohn, Dennis Tueller and James Fleming, too.
Our Network Affiliated Instructors are professionals who teach firearms and self defense for a living, and our Network Affiliated Attorneys are gun owners and shooters who take the use of firearms in self defense seriously, who have agreed to assist our members in a time of crisis. Even more importantly, the Network membership roll contains the names of thousands of like-minded people who also train hard, enjoy shooting and take gun ownership seriously. Network members are all part of this select demographic, and frankly, that is special.
More About Training
Did you like the lead article this month? I wrote that article sitting in two different airports on my way back from the RangeMaster Tactical Conference. The conference truly is one of the premier training events held in this country. But in addition to that event, great training is happening all around our nation, offered by Network Affiliated Instructors, along with other instructors who have not yet seen the light and joined the Network but who are nonetheless great trainers. Never before have more opportunities existed for people to train, not just in tactics, but also the legal considerations.
A great example is Network Affiliated Attorney Andrew Branca’s Law of Self-Defense training seminars, which he teaches all across the country (http://lawofselfdefense.com/classes-and-events/). Then there is Massad Ayoob and me teaching a Use of Deadly Force Instructor course this fall in Wisconsin. This course is being hosted by Massad Ayoob Group Staff Instructor David Maglio through his training company Concealed Carry Associates, LLC. David can be contacted through e-mail at
I strongly recommend all Network Affiliated Instructors become certified through the Massad Ayoob Group as a Use of Deadly Force Instructor. I know of several people who attended the first one we taught last year in WA State who are now teaching deadly force seminars as part of their business offerings. Part of the curriculum is compiling a complete teaching outline for this discipline, so the instructor can take the outline they receive in class, personalize it for their home area and student population and teach the material. I suspect we will teach more of these in the future, so if you cannot make it to Wisconsin in October, then look for another one in 2017.
As I wrote the last paragraph, it struck me that there is no website listing training courses such as these. I have created a sister page to our Network Facebook page, calling the new one the Armed Citizens’ Educational Foundation.
Please join me at https://www.facebook.com/Armed-Citizens-Educational-Foundation-230820597283923/ if you are a Facebook user, and for those who do not “do” Facebook, please don’t write to complain just yet! We are looking for ways to mirror this content at www.armedcitizensnetwork.org. I have found that Facebook is how much of the world communicates today, primarily because it works. Please consider joining, if nothing else, to follow the Network discussions of deadly force in self-defense cases (see https://www.facebook.com/groups/221594457860509/). As I get our Educational Foundation’s training Facebook page set up, I hope members will also tap into this new page, too.
Until then, take care and remember, I hope to see you in Louisville.
Click here to return to May 2016 Journal to read more.