Including ...A Decade of Assistance to Network Members • President’s Message • Attorney Question • Book Review • Editorial • About this Journal
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A Decade of Assistance to Network Members
by Gila Hayes
English dramatist John Fletcher, echoing the Biblical admonition in Matthew 7:20, succinctly observed, “Deeds not words shall speak me.” Distilled into aphorisms like “Actions speak louder than words,” this motto has guided substantial change for good when men and women stopped talking and started doing the right thing. That timeless truth is also useful when deciding between two options. When potential members ask, “What makes you better than your competitors?” I often respond, “Instead of listening to a bunch of words, I’d urge you to look at what we have done for our members.”
Because Network members do a great job of avoiding dangers, we often go through an entire year with only one or two members needing assistance after self defense. That has let us build up the Legal Defense Fund to over two million dollars because we have not needed to draw on it very often. In the same vein, one year’s history cannot illustrate the full spectrum of Network assistance to members after self defense.
President’s Message
by Marty Hayes, J.D.
Imagine being involved in a self-defense altercation, and after the incident is over, you call the Network for assistance and find that your membership is expired. This happened a few weeks ago, when a member from Chicago called me after an incident and upon pulling up his membership records, we found that his membership had been expired for six months. The good news is that he actually didn’t need our financial assistance. The incident only involved him drawing the gun, and with all permits in place, the cops were understanding of his actions and reasons for what he did. He was not cited or prosecuted. But yikes! He certainly could have been.
Attorney Question of the Month
This month’s question concerns witnesses at the scene of a defense shooting. Police officers involved in shootings are rightly advised to wait for 48 to 72 hours before making a statement to investigators. Should the same 48 to 72 hour principle apply to witnesses closely involved in a defense shooting? We asked our Network Affiliated Attorneys for their thoughts on the following–
If a Network member uses deadly force in defense in the presence of family, close associates, or in a workplace or church, what concerns would you as the member’s attorney have about accuracy of witness statements given by those in close proximity to the incident?
Book Review
Good Guys with Guns
By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman
5 x 8 inches Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Merril Press; December 16, 2019
ISBN-13: 978-0936783697
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Guys-Guns-Alan-Gottlieb/dp/0936783699
Just in time for the cold, rainy days of December the Second Amendment Foundation’s Merril Press released Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman’s follow-up volume to a book we reviewed some years ago, America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age. Their latest book, entitled Good Guys with Guns, is every bit as good. The authors stress that most armed citizens never “intended to find themselves in the middle of gun battles. They were ordinary people who were suddenly faced with extraordinary circumstances.”
Editor’s Notebook
I was setting up a ten-year renewal for a member who is approaching the end of his current term of membership when I momentarily thought that 2030 was two decades away not just one. Mercifully, I avoided inadvertently blurting out, “Isn’t 2030 a long way off?” before realizing that in a few days we will be writing 2020 on all of our documents.
A few years from now what do you suppose we will remember most about the years between 2010 and 2020? Perspective that only time can provide mellows out hassles that today seem unbearable. While it’s likely that we will forget short term trials and tribulations, I think there will be bigger things from this decade that won’t so quickly fade from memory.
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.