Hey folks, I’m Attorney Andrew Branca for Law of Self Defense LLC, and I’m really excited to share with all of you a recent lengthy interview of yours truly by CCW Safe as a kind of wrap-up of my thoughts about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The video of that interview is embedded below.
Many of you will know that CCW Safe is one of our long-standing partners and an organization I think a great deal of. In fact, I’m personally a member of CCW Safe, as is my wife, Emily. If you’re already a member of CCW Safe, you might want to just skip forward in this video to the time-stamp over my shoulder, which is where the actual interview begins.
For any of you not already familiar with CCW Safe, however, they are a provider of legal service memberships, what many people mistakenly call self-defense insurance. CCW Safe in effect promises to pay their member’s legal expenses if their member is involved in a use of force event.
And those expenses start big and get bigger, fast, folks. For example, imagine a case where you were threatened, you displayed your gun, you didn’t fire a shot didn’t hurt anybody—and now you find yourself charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, typically a 10-year felony.
If you’re charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, you’re looking at a retainer to your lead counsel on the order of $30,000 to $50,000. And that’s just for pre-trial work, folks, that’s not for going to trial. If it’s a killing case, where you’re charged with manslaughter or murder, you’re easily looking at $100,000 or $200,000 pre-trial expense, and just multiply that for the trial.
If you don’t have that kind of money stuffed in your mattress just in case you’re compelled to defend yourself or your family, it can be useful to have a financial partner standing behind you to make sure you have the resources you need to fight the legal battle the way you want it fought—as if your life depended on it. Because, really, it does. And that’s what CCW Safe offers to do for its members.
There are several companies out there that offer similar services. I’ve looked at all of them, as you might imagine, and I found that CCW Safe is the best fit for me personally. I’m a member of CCW Safe, my wife Emily is a member of CCW Safe.
One of the biggest reasons I favored CCW Safe over other similar offerings is that many of those others simply don’t provide the level of resources you need for an adequate legal defense. If you’re looking at a “self-defense insurance” offer that caps out at $150,000 or $250,000 for criminal legal defense, that’s simply not enough for a murder or manslaughter trial if you’ve killed someone in self-defense, as I’ve already discussed. In contrast, CCW Safe promises to pay what the defense costs, period, with no such cap. Read the fine print, folks, and understand what you’re getting—and not getting—from any such offering you’re considering.
Having said that CCW Safe is the best fit for me, whether they are the best fit for you is something only you can decide. But I do encourage you to take a look at what they have to offer by clicking the image or link below:
http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe
And if you do decide to become a member of CCW Safe, you can save 10% off your membership at that URL http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe, using the discount code LOSD10.
And with that out of the way, here’s my interview by CCW Safe on my thoughts on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial:
OK, folks that’s all I have for you on this topic today.
I do, however, want to invite all of you to join me TOMORROW, meaning December 30, 2021, to participate in our first ever LIVE YouTube stream, happening tomorrow at 1PM Eastern time, on the Law of Self Defense YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/lawofselfdefense
We’ve never previously done the YouTube live stream thing, but after being on a bunch of live streams hosted by others, mostly lawyers (hat-tip to Nick Rikeita, in particular), I thought I’d give it a try and see how it works.
I’ve got three topics I plan to cover tomorrow:
First, the Burlington Coat Factory police shooting in North Hollywood CA that occurred this past Thursday, and accidentally killed a 14-year-old girl.
Second, the interview just published today of one of the Kim Potter jurors.
Third, a Potter-like officer accidental use of a gun in place of a Taser incident that occurred in Kansas in 2018, and in which the officer involved had reckless manslaughter charges dismissed by the trial judge in a manner and on grounds that ought to also have occurred in the Potter trial.
As most of you probably know, I’m mostly an idiot about all things internet, so it’s quite possible tomorrow’s first-ever Law of Self Defense live stream will be a train wreck—but if you’d like to see it happen in real time, tomorrow at 1PM Eastern time would be the chance to do that.
Again, you can join that live stream tomorrow, December 30, 2021, at 1PM Eastern time, at the Law of Self Defense YouTube channel, at http://youtube.com/lawofselfdefense. It’s my expectation that the show will last no longer than an hour, but we’re kind of playing all that by ear, so we’ll see what happens.
If tomorrow’s show goes reasonably well, and is reasonably well-attended, we’ll plan on doing this live stream type content on a regular, probably weekly, basis.
Remember
You carry a gun so you’re hard to kill.
Know the law so you’re hard to convict.
Stay safe!
–Andrew
Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC
Law of Self Defense Platinum Protection Program
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The right not to be arrested or prosecuted without “probable cause” is protected by the United States Constitution. That protection doesn’t seem to work very well. What we need is a Federal Preemption Statute on probable cause. A Federal Law that sets the minimum standards for a probable cause hearing and awards costs to defendants who are subjected to a probable cause hearing without probable cause. All homicide is deemed justified or excused by the constitution until it appears to a jury that the state has proven the homicide to be felony beyond a reasonable doubt and there is no legitimate reason for prosecutors to be prosecuting a case where there is not sufficient credible evidence.
In the Rittenhouse, Arbery, and Potter cases, when the totality of the evidence that the state was aware of to justify an arrest is viewed in the light most favorable to the state, the state didn’t have evidence of facts and circumstances sufficient for a reasonable man to even have a reasonable suspicion that the homicides were not justified or excused.
We need a good strong Federal preemption statute that requires states to provide a constitutionally adequate justified or excusable use of force “immunity hearing” before a suspect can be bound over and prosecuted for a forcible felony. This would save all taxpayers a lot of money and certainly would save those citizens wrongly prosecuted a lot of injury.