Including ...Muscle Building for Mindset: An Interview with Linda Hoopes • President’s Message • Attorney Question • Book Review • Editor's Notebook • About this Journal
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Prosilience: Muscle Building for Mindset
An Interview with Linda Hoopes, PhD
Interview by Gila Hayes
The Network’s educational efforts focus on proactive preparation to better cope with the aftermath of using force in self defense. This month, I had an opportunity to learn how to build and practice resilience not only for life and death emergencies, but to move more easily through life’s little storms. Because that’s an attribute from which we could all benefit, I asked Linda Hoopes to share some of her knowledge and experience with our members. Linda is a psychologist, author of several books about proactive resilience and the head of the Resilience Alliance. Some years ago, she combined the concepts of proactivity and resilience into a single word, “prosilience,” that I think also describes the mindset we’d like to build in Network members.
Our conversation follows, and for members who prefer streaming video, please browse to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjuCbk0PeyI to learn from Linda in that format.
eJournal: I’ve got a lot of questions, Linda, but we should start by learning about your professional work, as well as how you came to walk our parallel path of self-defense preparation.
Hoopes: My background is in the field of industrial and organizational psychology, which is the application of psychology to workplaces and practical things. It got its start way back in the first World War as we were trying to figure out how to match people’s different skills and abilities to different roles. It is a very research based, quantitative field.
My work has intersected with this world of armed citizens because of my husband, who is a retired psychology professor as well, but also has become very active in the world of armed citizens. He was involved in the National Tactical Invitational (NTI) years ago. I got to know a number of people and participated in some of the events there and did some training.
President’s Message
by Marty Hayes, J.D.
Did you see the article about “Murder Insurance” the Wall Street Journal put out last month? In order to write this article, the reporter(s) contacted the self-defense insurance companies and ended up doing a somewhat in-depth look into only two of them, US Law Shield and USCCA. Their reporters also contacted us, despite the fact that the Network is not a self-defense insurance company, but we refused to discuss either our members or our business with them.
The link to the WSJ article is behind a paywall (for WSJ subscribers, see this link), but there is another article which takes much of its content from the WSJ feature in Insurance Business (linked here).
If you read either article, realize that anything they wrote about the Network was gleaned from our website – based on what was reported, likely our most recent Annual Year in Review. Mention of the Network in their article, without making any attempt to explain that our assistance to members isn’t insurance, shows how poorly the WSJ and other media outlets which have excerpted or reprinted the piece understand the issues. We would have preferred not to have been mentioned in their article because it is so incomplete as to confuse honest people who genuinely want to understand their interaction with the criminal justice system after self defense.
Attorney Question of the Month
It is very common for gun owners to also carry knives they may use as defensive weapons where gun possession is prohibited, or as a back up against gun malfunction during a self-defense emergency. As a result, members often ask questions about knives for self defense. For this month’s column, we asked our affiliated attorneys these questions –
In your area, what laws apply to carrying a knife?
If one inadvertently violated a municipal regulation prohibiting blade length, automatic opening mechanisms, or other knife features, how damaging would the violation be to an overall claim of self defense?
If one is found in possession of an illegal knife, what is the punishment and does it affect one’s carry permit or right to possess firearms?
Our affiliated attorneys’ responses follow.
Book Review
10 Powerful Strategies for Conflict De-Escalation
How To Achieve Conflict Resolution Through Effective Communication
By Simon Osamoh
160 pages, Kindle edition $9.99, paperback $14.99
ISBN-13: 979-8359479073
Reviewed by Gila Hayes
Shooting skills are fun to learn and practice so it’s easy to forget the “soft skills” like breaking contact from a budding conflict and de-escalation before contact turns hostile. Ironically, we interact with other humans far more often than we fight, for which we should all be profoundly grateful, so a few times a year, I dig into books, lectures, and other instructional resources about verbal de-escalation. In April, confined to an airplane for hours, I read about strategies for de-escalation through communication, as spelled out in Simon Osamoh’s book, 10 Powerful Strategies For Conflict De-Escalation.
Editor’s Notebook
by Gila Hayes
Members express alarm over acts of aggression they encounter on the road. Even if you’ve not experienced it yourself, there is quite a lot of video showing drivers involved in yelling angrily, gesturing aggressively, and punching, kicking or shooting. After a protracted exchange of angry words, it is nearly inevitable that one is going to claim self defense, asserting that the other person was the first to do wrong.
Few will argue that road rage is one of the more likely risks armed citizens think about when they practice tactics to avoid being killed or crippled. Classes teach shooting from cars, even some martial arts have online video about fighting inside a car. Have self-defense minded people concluded that they’d rather fight than escape?
Research has long told us that when frightened, threatened or angry, the reasoning part of the brain is greatly handicapped when the amygdala grabs control and from its primitive survival programming, directs the fight, flee or freeze response.
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.