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.