Including ... Non-Gun Weapons • President's Message • Attorney Question of the Month • Audio Lecture Review • Networking • Editorial • About this Journal
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Non-Gun Weapons: Carried and Improvised
An Interview with Michael Janich
Interview by Gila Hayes
eJournal: Last month, in the Network’s online journal (http://armedcitizensnetwork.org/march-2016-surviving-an-active-shooter) we talked with you at length about strengthening our defense potential against armed terrorists. A number of times during that discussion, you spoke of defending yourself with whatever is at hand in a no-gun environment. From your long experience as a martial artist, can you outline principles for using improvised weapons to the greatest effect? Because our membership is firearms-focused, many of us may not have given sufficient consideration to improvising impact weapons, like the way you mentioned striking with a hammer, when you were outlining ways to make a classroom safer.
Janich: Whenever I’m asked about this topic, there is always one important thing I try to address first, and that is the mindset you want to achieve. When the media describes successful interventions in active shooter incidents, they typically do us a disservice by describing them in politically correct terms. For example, the U.S. service members who took down the shooter on the train in Belgium last summer. There, you had a situation where people took decisive action, but you often hear from the media things like, “Well, they tackled the shooter. They overpowered him.”
If you think in those terms, you are already thinking in the wrong mindset, because you are not trying to keep them from making a touchdown; you are trying to keep them from killing people. If you tackle somebody, what are you going to do once you tackle him? What you need to do is stop him from killing people, so you want to act as decisively and as ruthlessly as possible. Take him out of the fight!
President’s Message
by Marty Hayes, J.D.
The other day, we received an email from a member who had contacted an attorney on our Network Affiliated Attorney list. The member wanted to do as we recommend, that being to meet the attorney, chat for a few minutes and have the attorney agree to be available in the event of the member using force in self defense. That is all well and good. But according to our member, the Network Affiliated Attorney’s staff told him that the attorney had a program through which the individual puts the attorney “on retainer” for $350 a year! The attorney has a website dedicated to this, so we know this wasn’t some sort of miscommunication between the member and the law firm staff.
Attorney Question of the Month
For the past few months, this column has been dedicated to protecting the armed citizen’s rights after self defense. This month we asked our affiliated attorneys about the next step in the timeline–
Assuming that the defender has just needed to shoot an attacker in self defense, and the attacker is alive and talking, telling his side of the story to police, what are the issues influencing whether or not the armed defender should give a statement to police in order to counter the statement being given by the wounded attacker?
There were so many answers that we carried this topic over to this edition of our journal.
Audio Lecture Review
Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make
Real Life Examples of How They Get Into Trouble and How to Prevent It
An audio lecture by Claude Werner
$19.95, 1 hour, 14 minutes
https://www.freewebstore.org/Personal-Safety-Training/Gunowner_Mistakes_Audio/p1933952_15296641.aspx
Reviewed by Gila Hayes
I regularly study Affiliated Instructor Claude Werner’s blog, so when he releases an audio or video lecture, I snap it right up. This audio presentation grew out of a popular lecture Werner gave at the 2015 Rangemaster Tactical Conference and is the subject of many of his blog posts at http://www.tacticalprofessor.com.
News from our Affiliates
Compiled by Gila Hayes
In Iowa, Network Affiliated Instructor Darin Van Ryswyk keeps busy teaching CCW permit training courses, but he also works hard to take his students beyond that minimum training requirement. One of his programs, Principles of Armed Self-Defense, caught my eye, because instead of being hyper focused on gun skills, it addresses a strong fighting stance, foot work for creating distance and angles, as well as weapon retention. See http://cwrfirearmstraining.com. Kudos to Darin and his staff for providing solid self defense training for folks in the Ames, IA area.
Long-time Network Affiliated Instructor Steve Eichelberger of Bend, OR was the subject of a complimentary and informative feature article written by southern Oregon’s prominent outdoor writer Gary Lewis.
Editor’s Notebook
by Gila Hayes
I’ve enjoyed many educational opportunities lately, and our journal’s lead articles continue to reflect the knowledgeable people with whom I’ve been privileged to speak. Next month, we’ll have a good discussion about getting the most out of training courses when we interview Mike Seeklander. Mike is one of the training gurus responsible for the content on The Best Defense TV, champion competitive shooter, and popular firearms instructor with whom the Network is proud to be affiliated.
About this Journal
The eJournal of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, Inc. is published monthly on the Network’s website at http://armedcitizensnetwork.org/our-journal. Content is copyrighted by the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, Inc.