Including ... Introducing Our New Network Advisory Board Members • Marie D'Amico • Karl Rehn • President’s Message • Attorney Question • Attorney Recruitment Successes • Book Review • Editor's Notebook • About this Journal
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Introducing Our New Network Advisory Board Members
by Gila Hayes
The Network’s greatest strength has always derived from bringing together armed citizens, instructors, experts, attorneys and other leaders in the self-defense world as a united force. Network members, affiliates and advisors all stand in defense of an individual member, who otherwise would be one small voice with limited resources, easily victimized by an anti-gun prosecutor or district attorney bent on misrepresenting lawful self defense as a crime or by a plaintiff’s attorney hoping to win a big monetary award against an intended victim who chose to fight off a criminal who intended to kill or cripple them.
Backing up one another is not just limited to fending off unmeritorious prosecution or lawsuit. We start by helping members better understand self-defense issues, what to expect and how to manage the legal aftermath of a use of force incident; that all starts on day one with a member’s induction into the Network via our extensive member education package and continues through our monthly online journal’s educational interviews and columns.
For years, our Network Advisory Board of Massad Ayoob, John Farnam, Tom Givens, Emanuel Kapelsohn, Dennis Tueller and the late Jim Fleming have contributed interviews to help Network members better prepare to defend themselves and their families and to weather the legal aftermath of self defense. We are happy this month to anticipate input to our member education efforts from our two newest Advisory Board’s voices and we know we will value their knowledgeable input when needed in defense of members after self defense.
Both of our new Advisory Board members have been rank-and-file Network members for over a decade. As follow up to last month’s President’s Message briefly announcing that Karl Rehn and Marie D’Amico had accepted his invitations to serve on our Advisory Board, we wanted members to become better acquainted with both. One, a life-time Texan, and the other recently retired from a 22-year career as an attorney in upstate New York, both bring with them tremendously different backgrounds and experiences, so the best way for members to get to know them is, perhaps, in their own words.
Marie D'Amico, Esq.
I’ve been privileged to be acquainted with Marie for several decades, owing to her work with Kahr Arms and her efforts on pro-gun litigation. After a 21-year career as Deputy County Attorney for the Monroe County NY Law Department, she became General Counsel for Kahr Arms, having been associated with the gun maker for many years providing marketing support, staffing their exhibits at conventions, advising on product development and assisting in many other ways.
A certified Force Science analyst, Marie contributes litigation support to legal cases, including the recent, high-profile case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen and others dealing with red flag laws, community caretaking, disparity of force, justified force, orders of protection, firearms confiscation, mental health, licensing and more.
Karl Rehn
When introducing Karl Rehn, our other new Network Advisory Board member, I knew that I had my work cut out for me – not in finding enough to talk about, but in deciding upon which elements of his many accomplishments to focus. Visit Karl’s KR Training website and read his curriculum vitae and you’ll see what I mean.
Now in his 31st year of teaching, Karl was among the first of the regionally prominent firearms instructors to join forces with the Network and has introduced many of his students to us. He was one of the first guest columnists for this online journal, writing Beyond the Firing Line about force-on-force classes. We revisited his work several years ago in an article about training. Network members may also recognize Karl from his book, Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training which we reviewed in 2019.
President’s Message
by Marty Hayes, J.D.
Since the outstanding and heroic actions of Eli Dicken on July 19, 2022 in the Greenwood, Indiana mall where he single-handedly took down an active shooter, many members have called or written and asked us about the Network’s position on carrying a gun in a no-gun zone, as Mr. Dicken was doing when he stopped the active killer.
First off, it is illegal to help people to commit crimes. If not statutorily illegal, it is against public policy for an organization such as ours to say that we will help a person to commit a crime. That means we cannot state to our members and prospective members that the Network would supply financial assistance for committing the crime of being armed in a statutorily established no-gun zone. Some of the questions I’ve been asked, though, have gone beyond the recent example of a mall into questions about gun free zones like schools, where it is illegal to possess guns.
Attorney Question of the Month
Last month’s attorney question introduced a discussion of alternatives to going to trial. The options vary a lot from state to state, and our affiliated attorneys were very generous, weighing in with numerous responses. We continue that question this month. If you missed the first installment, read it here, in addition to the commentary from our affiliated attorneys that follows. Here is what we asked:
Does your state offer the option of deferred prosecution or deferred judgment/sentencing?
How does it work? Does the person plead guilty or are charges filed only if they fail to meet the agreement’s conditions? Does the person report to a probation officer? Is the person’s record cleared after an agreed-upon time without any further incidents (of specific concern to Network members, are gun rights restored)?
Attorney Recruitment Successes
by Josh Amos, Affiliate Manager
One element in the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network service to our members is maintaining an ever-growing network of affiliated attorneys. The attorney network is constantly expanding and contracting; however, we launched a new recruiting effort this spring and I am happy to say that we have added over 200 new attorneys nationwide through our spring/summer 2022 campaign. These newly recruited attorneys are in addition to our existing network. I am proud of this milestone and thought this was a great time to revisit some of our suggestions for members wanting to connect with attorneys in their home states.
Network affiliated attorneys allow us to post their names and contact information in the member-only portion of the Network website. As you saw in the foregoing pages, many of our generous Network affiliated attorneys also contribute to our monthly online journal’s Attorney Question of the Month column, an entirely voluntary effort. I intentionally use the word “generous.”
Book Review
Pivot Points:
Creating A Culture of Preparedness and Resiliency in America
By Paul T. Martin
ISBN-13: 978-1515310679
Copyrighted in 2015
174 pages, 6x9 paperback, $11.95
Reviewed by Gila Hayes
I read to learn. Biographies teach me about events and people, and as you know if you read this column often, “how to” or instructional writings top my reading list. I am not a big consumer of inspirational or motivational books. This month, I somewhat inadvertently stumbled into an inspirational book when I picked up Pivot Points by Paul Martin and started reading.
Editor’s Notebook
Signs!
by Gila Hayes
We’re getting a lot of questions about No Gun signage, and understandably so as we have all kept one ear glued to the news reports about Elisjsha Dicken, the young man who stopped the Greenwood Park mall shooter in Indiana. While Indiana law includes the usual list of places where firearms possession is illegal, on most private property No Guns signs do not carry the force of law. That is not true for private property signs in all 50 states.
What does the signage mean? No Gun signs on private property in Indiana, as is true for quite a few other states, derive from the owners’ property rights to restrict what you or anyone else does on their private property.
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.
Do not mistake information presented in this online publication for legal advice; it is not. The Network strives to assure that information published in this journal is both accurate and useful. Reader, it is your responsibility to consult your own attorney to receive professional assurance that this information and your interpretation or understanding of it is accurate, complete and appropriate with respect to your particular situation.