The Principles that Guide Us
by Gila Hayes
Network President Marty Hayes and I sat down in the video studio in the final days of 2024 to compile the very last piece of our January 2025 members’ journal. There’s an informal video version at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ8nqpHOfOI click on the picture if you prefer video format. We waited as long as we could this year, because last year we’d already recorded our Year in Review when two men in the Midwest robbed a Network member. He handed over his wallet and ran to cover. One robber pursued. With a bullet literally whizzing by and nicking his ear, the member applied his training and shot his attacker.
We paid the member’s attorney for a late-night visit to the jail and because that jurisdiction holds anyone involved in a shooting overnight, our member was released the next day, at which time law enforcement told him they did not expect any charges. They were right, but we were all relieved to know that the member, as counseled by his attorney during their late-night consultation, quietly waited for the system to run through its process.
What We Do
I was thinking that because a tenth of our active members came to us as new members between last January 1 and today, it would be useful to write briefly about what we do for members and why we do it the way we do.
Let’s begin by outlining what we do for members, starting with what may be the least recognized, but in reality, the most important: our member education. That starts with over a dozen video lectures and a book by Massad Ayoob that’s more than 300 pages long, followed up monthly by video and written articles online addressing a wide range of topics. Non-members can enjoy previews at https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/learn/member-education-commitment and members access the full training package either by logging in to https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/videos or plugging the USB thumb drive we mail new members into their smart TV or computer.
Considering how much we invest in education – both for members and as separate outreach to the public to increase understanding of self-defense use of force – it’s kind of sad that the reason most folks join is first focused on legal expenses after self defense. Maybe that’s the worry that brings them in. I’m always happy when, as expressed by a gentleman who has been part of the Network family for about three years, members view and realize the importance of the materials we send. We appreciated a note we received recently in which a member wrote that his library is full of work by Massad Ayoob, Marc MacYoung, and Gavin de Becker, but for him, the Network’s videos “were the glue that put it all together.”
“Please, members, it is so important that you view all of the videos we send on the thumb drive and stream online. Take notes while viewing, and have that material available if you’re asked about your training as a defendant at trial,” Marty Hayes urges. A jury in a self-defense case weighs the actions of the defendant against the “actions of a reasonable and prudent person knowing all the defendant knows and seeing all the defendant saw,” he continues.
“Consequently, if you understand pre-attack indicators, you could explain your knowledge of pre-attack indicators to the jury and then explain what you observed the individual that you used force against doing that led you to a reasonable belief that your actions were justified. If you understand the law of self defense in your jurisdiction – and it’s important that you have your jurisdiction’s laws down – you could explain to the jury how your knowledge led you to use only the amount of force that you felt was reasonable and necessary. That should go a long way toward winning an acquittal.”
Use of force education can be raised before trial, too. “Before trial, you and your attorney are going to sit down with the prosecutor and explain your knowledge of self-defense law, your knowledge of a lot of the intricacies involved in making a self-defense decision, and hopefully the prosecutor, or perhaps the grand jury if it’s a grand jury state, will look at it and say, ‘You know, this is more likely a reasonable case of self defense, not a crime.’ That is why it’s so important that you not only review the videos and take notes, and read Massad’s book and highlight particular things and make notes in the margins, so you could show a prosecutor, grand jury or judge, ‘Hey, I had this stuff down. I knew this ahead of time. I didn’t just pick this up a week before trial and start reading it.’
“It’s just so important, in fact, that we believe one of the reasons no Network member has gone to trial after an act of self defense is because of this knowledge and training. If you don’t get anything else out of this video today, please remember the fact that the training is vitally important.”
While I wish we saw more armed citizens avidly pursuing training to better understand the legal parameters of self defense, reality shows that often people come to the Network and to the many look-alikes that have popped up since we opened in 2008, because they want to know they’ll have help with what Gunsite Academy founder Jeff Cooper called the second problem or problem two in his writings several decades ago. I worry that some of those old ways have been lost so I asked Marty to tell us a little bit about what Cooper defined as problem two.
“Jeff Cooper founded Gunsite in the mid-1970s to teach armed civilian self defense. He wanted his students trained and able to solve problem one – that was the attack against themselves. At first, that was really his whole focus,” Marty relates.
“Only after he started hearing rumblings about the legal aspect of armed self defense did he started addressing it in writing. He took that a long way beyond his first few comments in his Cooper’s Corner magazine column to later comments in his books. It was in Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip that he really began to acknowledge that there are both criminal and civil repercussions to use of force and self defense, as well as, perhaps psychological, societal and financial repercussions. That is what Cooper called problem two.”
The need to address problem two, interacting with the criminal justice system after self defense, arose for two Network members during 2024. One incident involved a non-fatality shooting to stop a serious physical assault after being knocked down, the other was a defensive display of a knife over which no charges were filed, but in the immediate aftermath, we thought it best to have an attorney review the facts and stand by in case it mushroomed into a bigger problem. It did not.
Those incidents epitomize why we opened the Network in 2008 and why it has since grown from little more than a good idea and the investments of its founders, into the 22,000-member organization it is today. Originally, Marty sought a way to address problem two for the students trained at The Firearms Academy of Seattle.
He recalls, “When we started the Network, we had taken care of problem one. We knew how to shoot for self defense; we knew what level of force to use for self defense and at least at my own training school, we addressed the legal aspect of use of force in self defense but we really didn’t have a vehicle to address the legal aftermath. In about 2003, I decided that we really needed to address this, too.
“I applied and was accepted into law school. My original idea was to become an attorney so I could help defend our students. Then I came to realize, attorneys work really hard, especially when they get a case for a person they know is innocent.
“I was already in my 50s, and I realized that I could do more good if I could guide criminal or civil defenses of people who used force in self defense. As the president of the Network, I could pay attorneys on behalf of our members, so that is what we did. We decided to start an organization and put money aside in the Legal Defense Fund. At the beginning, I thought someday we would have enough money to help defend members after self defense. Today, we have a substantial Fund, and have helped a substantial number of members.”
Over our 17-year history, the Network has paid attorneys to represent 35 members, expending in excess of $325,000. The incidents break down into roughly a half-dozen categories. Our statistics closely mirror what we’ve been told for years by researchers like John Lott. Over forty percent involved defensive display of a firearm and a little under twenty percent resulted in fatality shootings. A bit more than a tenth of the time, members discharged a gun in defense of themselves or their families, and ten percent more involved physical defense against an attacker, with just a little under another ten percent involving pepper spray use. The final approximately one tenth of the times, the member neither drew nor fired a gun, but their assailant tried to get them charged with having used a gun in the confrontation.
Some of these categories seem almost trivial and the reader may wonder why is legal representation needed if a person defends with pepper spray or, for example, escapes after shoving an attacker off them then gives verbal commands that stop further aggression? What’s the legal risk when an aggrieved aggressor alleges that they were threatened by a person who “might have even had a gun!”?
Marty explains that an attorney’s intervention as soon as possible after a self defense incident is important. “We think it is better to play offense than defense,” he observes. “Let’s say you’re involved in an altercation, but it doesn’t come to blows. Maybe you shoved someone or displayed pepper spray or maybe you even had to fire a little shot of pepper spray to get them to back off.
“You need to let the police know that you were accosted. You are the victim of a crime and so you need to report that crime for a couple reasons. First, it’s in the interest of society, because the individual that your use of pepper spray made leave you alone may have committed a more serious crime an hour or so earlier. Because you reported it, now the police have someone to track down and question. More importantly, for our purposes, we need to be able to say, ‘Yes, officer, I was involved this incident. It was a case of self defense and I would love to talk to you about it. As soon as we get my attorney on the phone or down here in person, we’ll sit down and we’ll have a chat about it.’
“That’s so important! We need to make sure the police have the information necessary for them to investigate the criminal activity. The criminal activity is what was done to you. We’ve had many members call to whom I say, ‘Call this attorney. Get him on board. Make sure you have his number,’ then nothing more happened with the case. That’s great! We’ll gladly pay the $500 to $1,000 to an attorney upfront because we’ll know that will short circuit a possibly much more expensive case later.”
The difficulty, of course, in most interpersonal conflict is staying “on the side of the angels,” when circumstances are unclear about who started a confrontation that ended in use of force. The risk is losing the right to argue self defense in court by starting the fight. I’m continually amazed at how rapidly rude words or actions turn into exaggerated accusations and into even real violence. We asked Marty about situations in which being found to be the one who provoked the fight prevented the defendant from showing they acted in self defense.
“I don’t see the initial aggressor issue really discussed too much in classes I’ve attended, nor in the discussions on the internet about the legalities of use of force,” he noted. “The initial aggressor issue will come up in a closed conference with the judge and the other side’s attorney before the trial begins. They will claim, ‘Listen, this individual was the initial aggressor. The case law here in this state says that if a person started the fight, then he or she cannot argue self defense.’
“Well, in order to argue self defense you have to say, ‘I did it, but I was justified and here’s why.’ If you can’t argue the ‘here’s why’ part of self defense then all you can do is just say, “Yep, I did it.’ If you did it, then that’s likely enough information for the prosecutor to convince the judge or jury that you committed a crime. It is so important that you not be viewed by the judge as the initial aggressor.
“Statements may be made to police, perhaps by the guy you shot justifiably or by his buddies who were standing in the background. They start complaining to the police, ‘My brother didn’t do anything to that guy. The other guy started the fight. He threw the first punch. He was the one that was road raging.’ They’ll convince the prosecutor that the defendant – that’s you – started the altercation.
“That can happen in a number of ways. Probably the most common one is in a road rage situation. Two people are driving down the road when one guy cuts off the other person. One says, ‘Oh my! I can’t believe he has offended me that badly!” and so the guy that gets cut off starts honking his horn and screaming. He drives up beside the other car and flips the driver off.
“The good guy decides, ‘I can’t handle this! I’m going to stop and discuss things.’ Pretty soon it just turns into a big mess. The guy that was initially cut off pulls a knife. Well, you know what happens when somebody pulls a knife on you? You pull your gun and then pretty soon you’ve shot someone.
“If you had just let it go after he cut you off, nothing would have happened, but you had to get pissed off and honk your horn and tell him what a bad person he is. Do that and a judge will likely view you as being the initial aggressor in the confrontation. Sometimes cutting somebody off simply happens accidentally. I was driving the other day and all of a sudden I saw headlights right in my rear view mirror. The other car was like 10 feet off my rear bumper. I thought, ‘Did I just pull out in front of somebody?’ and realized it was quite likely that I had. I thought I’d looked both ways before pulling out, but maybe I didn’t look to the right long enough. I just pulled over and let the guy go by, trying to be the good guy. If I would have made him stay behind me and get more upset and more angry then maybe we would have turned up in a road rage situation. Instead, I thought, ‘Just let this guy go,’ so I pulled over.
“Don’t do anything that will make someone believe that you started the whole altercation. If something happens that could be perceived in a way that shows you were the initial aggressor, why not say, ‘Hey, guy, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to pull out in front of you, okay? Please forgive me. Let’s just go our own separate ways.’”
There’s tremendous power in an apology, even with the tightly-wound people one encounters these days.
I’d like to close out this part of our year in review with the observation that the Network would not have grown into the exclusive member assistance group that we are if we refused to help members who had justifiably used force to stop threats to life. I mention that because it is a concern we frequently address with first-time callers. One man insisted that he had to have the names of some people in his city who had used our services. We declined out of respect for our members’ privacy. Without naming names, we report on the Network’s service to members periodically, usually in Year in Review reports like this one, and previous years articles under the “The Network in Action” heading in the right side menu at https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/our-journal/2024-journals all of which are public.
Marty expresses concern about YouTube videos touting competitors’ “success” stories. “They put their newly-acquitted defendant/victim of the criminal trial in front of a camera and basically say, ‘Tell us your story and how awesome it was that we got you off,’ and I get it, they get to pat themselves on their backs and the defendant gets to feel like the ‘hero’ for a while, so he’s happy to do it.
“The Network has had 35 members involved in self-defense incidents, and about half of them were pretty serious. We don’t talk about their cases publicly, and you don’t see videos with our members speaking. We have had members we helped want to tell their stories. We’ve only published stories with names a couple of times. One involved a non member after there had already been a trial so the information was public; we published the other story after the statute of limitations had run out. Neither could have been sued by their attacker or the family.
“Most of the time, when members have wanted to tell their stories, we have had to say, ‘We can’t do that,’ because it would not be in the member’s best interests, legally.
“Depending on the jurisdiction, a person can be sued for up to two or three years after one of these incidents. If you have just been acquitted, you need to keep your mouth shut and if someone wants to publicize your story, say, ‘I need to talk to my attorney first,’ and the attorney is going to say, ‘We are not going to talk about this.’”
More commonly, we’ve interviewed attorneys who represented members, and several of those stories, which are full of important learning points, are also found under the “The Network in Action” menu linked earlier. In the final accounting, actions always speak louder than words, and our record of service for members who used force in self defense does just that.
Marty adds, “There’s been social media about other companies that failed to assist after self-defense acts, and they have been castigated by others in the community of armed citizens. We’ve been doing this for nearly 17 years, and don’t you think it would be all over social media if we failed to assist a member?
“On the other hand, since we’re not insurance, it is also important that we retain the ability to not help someone if we don’t think we should – if the situation showed that it was not a legitimate act of self defense. Maybe if someone used excessive force. Say there was a pushing and shoving incident, and someone grabbed a baseball bat and beat the other guy to death. We’re probably not going to go to their defense but it has to be clear cut, so we’re going to help members if at all possible.”
The calls that come in to the Network office suggest that people think we’re fielding a dozen such calls for help every week. In reality, Network members are probably the least likely people in the world to get into fights. I would like to talk a little about our Network members – maybe even brag a little about the men and women who are our members.
Who Are Network Members?
17 years of “Referred By” tracking tells an interesting story. When we ask new members how they learned about us, their responses credit recommendations from people they trust, often their instructors. Now, I admit that we “cherry pick” the best of the best armed citizens to be Network members. We enjoy gun shows as much as the next hobbyist, but we don’t market there.
We have an education-focused Internet presence, but we don’t hard-sell membership online or anywhere else with enticing offers to “win a free gun,” or “buy now and be entered in a drawing for something really big.” Overwhelmingly, from the beginning, our introductions to members have come from trusted instructors, many of whom also serve on our Advisory Board – Massad Ayoob, John Farnam, Tom Givens, Karl Rehn, Dennis Tueller, and attorneys who also teach Emanuel Kapelsohn and Marie d’Amico.
Outreach by recommendation, while not resulting in explosive growth or brags of millions of members, has resulted in very stable membership with high renewal rates year to year and a number of our members have been with us from our very first years. More importantly, we associate with like-minded men and women who came to us because they share our goals. While members sometimes quip that they hope and pray they never have to call us “for real,” they also share the satisfaction we all feel in knowing that for the few members that do need our help over the course of the year, each Network member has contributed to and been part of the relief given to that individual.
I think we are fortunate to enjoy the stability – both financially and by reputation – to operate the Network at a size that lets us best serve the members, so we’re not expending all our energy constantly beating the bushes for new sales.
The reason we’re not doing the hard sell is because our member-assistance organization is well capable of fulfilling its mission for a select group of members, and, while we don’t mean to be harsh, the Network is actually better off without poorly trained or uncommitted gun owners who don’t put in the study and invest the effort to learn and practice their responsibilities as armed citizens.
At the heart of the Network’s mission statement is this: What is practical; what is needed? As a result, the Network is a down-to-earth, basic, no-frills organization of like-minded men and women joined together to make sure none of our own people face the criminal justice system alone after doing nothing more than stopping a deadly attack against themselves or their families. It is nothing more than that; it is all that and nothing less.