Do You Need Self Defense Insurance—CCW Permit or Not? Attorney Advice

Wondering if self-defense insurance is worth it, even without a CCW (concealed carry weapons) permit? YES! Get expert insights from an attorney on protecting yourself legally in any self defense situation.

LESSON LEARNED

Don’t leave this up to chance! Get insurance if you plan on fighting back in self defense, whether it’s with a water bottle, pepper spray, or firearm.

RESOURCES

USCCA (U.S. Concealed Carry Association) – Offers legal protection plans and educational resources on self-defense laws.
usconcealedcarry.com

CCW Safe – Provides coverage for legal defense after self-defense incidents, regardless of CCW status in some cases.
ccwsafe.com

Byrna.com – Less lethal launcher (alternative to firearms). Mandi teaches a class on this! Ask her.

Artemis Defense Institute – Training facility for self-defense and use of force scenarios.

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Reach Mandi through her website AwareAndPrepared.Life or Instagram @WomenAwareAndPrepared

Transcript

 Hey, brave one. Welcome to another episode of the aware and prepared podcast.  I'm your host, Mandy Pratt, a trained domestic violence victim advocate, self defense teacher and professional speaker who helps those feeling vulnerable, learn emotional self defense and how to be street smart. You deserve to live in peace and safety. 

Stick around to hear safety tips that will help us enjoy empowered lives. Let's leave worry behind so we can be savvy, aware, and prepared.  

Well, welcome back to another episode of the aware and prepared podcast.  And I have a very interesting guest for you today. So Stephen, thank you for being here with us.  So I met Stephen because I had to renew my CCW permit, and some of you are going, what the heck is a CCW?

So that means concealed carry weapons permit. And I was, had to go through like an eight hour course just to renew and. The range master who was teaching us had recommended at the end, you know, that we definitely get CCW insurance and that we speak to a certain someone if we're interested in finding out more.

So that's how I found out. Um, Stephen's info. So, Stephen, why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do? Sure. Sure. So, um, I, I wear several hats. My, uh, , I am an attorney. I'm a use of force policy attorney. I, uh, I'm also, well,  I don't like to say that I'm a civil rights attorney.

That's a very, very pleasant way of saying that I'm a criminal defense attorney now, our law firm, the law offices of Lieberman and Tara Mina. We exclusively represent military personnel, law enforcement officers, CCW holders, and then other cases that have been referred to us by other civil rights organizations 

90 percent of the time there typically is a firearm involved, sometimes there was a use of force that didn't involve a firearm.

And we'll get into that because that's probably, uh, one of the things that most people are, are the greatest misunderstanding when it comes to CCW insurance. Um, My wife, uh, several years ago, back in 2012, um, opened up the Artemis Defense Institute. It is a, uh, it's a weapons training facility, but it utilizes, well, up until recently, exclusively utilized, uh, technology in the training of weapons, manipulations, and situational awareness.

Basically, her premise was, and I completely agreed with it, most people that, that carry guns, or most people that are in the process of learning about guns, typically they go to the range. That's it. That's the exclusivity of their, you know, their training. And most of the training is what we refer to as seminar based training.

They, uh, you know, they go, they take a class. Maybe a year later, they'll take another class, right? Um, she found that to be wholly inadequate. Now she's a trainer herself. Okay, but she found that that concept to be wholly inadequate. So she wanted to develop a place where you would be coming in on a regular basis, like perhaps once a week.

Okay. Um, and, and we do, we have about almost a thousand members at the Artemis Defense Institute that come in on a Weekly basis, you know, going through tactical drills. And that's the key thing. You're, you're not standing  in a bay shooting at a piece of paper. You're, you know, you're engaged in what we call judgmental use of force.

Working through defensive tactics, things like that. Now  we subsequently have developed our own technology that we use. Originally, we had just simply acquired simulators that we would put people on. We've now developed our own technology called the Orion Training System, which is a VR based defensive tactics simulator.

And we actually lease that out to law enforcement agencies and military units throughout the United States. Um, so that that's been kind of an interesting development, um, but our client base is pretty fascinating because we, we will get people that come to us that have never  touched a gun before in their entire life.

And we will start the training protocols to teach them to go from complete novice to what we like to refer to as the development of mastery at skill at arms. Uh, one of the things that we constantly are driving into them is that the gun. Isn't your sole source of power, right? Oftentimes you might find yourself in a, in a non permissive environment, you know, where you can't have it and you still are subject to victimization.

So you have to learn other skill sets beyond simply ballistic. So we're constantly trying to develop that holistic mentality. Eventually, people will end up taking our concealed carry permit course. They'll become a CCW holder, and then hopefully they get CCW insurance, um, then, you know, there runs the possibility that they'll get involved in an actual defensive shooting or some use of force event, and then they typically will retain me to represent them.

So in a sense, we've got kind of the closed circuit, right? We take people from cradle to grave, you know, without being too dramatic in that. Um, I spend most of my time you.  Not so much working the Artemis Defense Institute. I spend most of my time doing Second Amendment jurisprudence and defending our clients.

Um, the, the, when you had originally contacted me, um, it was about  CCW insurance. Yep. And I, you know, I, I'm gonna tell you here on this podcast the same thing that I used to tell my, my clients in my classes. Um, I would say going back eight or nine years ago.  If you ask me, do you think it's a good idea that I get insurance?

I would have been somewhat prosaic about it. I'm like, I don't know. I mean, um, I've never represented somebody who has it. So I, I don't don't know. Now, I, there's about, I probably should back up for a second. There are about five different CCW insurance providers. It's a small little cottage industry. And it really developed because most people's homeowners or rental insurance policies specifically exclude use of force.

So, you know, a lot of people will think, well, I've got an umbrella policy. Well, yeah, unfortunately it's, it's not going to work, you know, in this condition. So this little cottage industry developed.  And all of the insurance companies reached out to me and said, If some, but one of our members gets involved in a use of force event, would you be willing to represent them?

Uh, sure. So in a sense, I really didn't have a dog in the hunt, right? You know, but, um, about 6 or 7 years ago. I had my first client that actually had insurance, and it was with U. S. C. C. A. Now, U. S. C. C. A. is sort of the big dog in the marketplace. Right. And, um, they, uh, you know, he, he signed my, my retainer agreement.

I contacted the, uh, U. S. C. C. A., and I said, okay, well.  I don't know how this works. I mean, uh, they said, well, you've got a signed retainer agreement. Send it to us. We'll send you a check within the next 24 hours.  And they did. Um, and then I had another case where it was a client that was insured by USCCA and the same thing.

Um, I, at this point now I've had 29 cases where the client has had insurance. In all 29 cases, it's been with USCCA and they've paid instantly. I mean, just, just Johnny on the spot. Um, they've been an absolute pleasure to work with.  This is not to say that the other insurance companies aren't just as good.

They may very well be. I just don't have any direct experience with that.  Um, my cases on the low end with very simple misdemeanors have been around 10, 000. On the high end, it's been upwards of close to 300, 000. So, I mean, there's substantial amounts of money, you know, flowing through these things. Um, the, the, the big thing that I think a lot of people  think is that, well,  You know, I'm carrying this gun.

I don't intend to use it. I mean, by definition, none of us do, right? I don't intend to use it. And if I do use it, it's going to be so painfully obvious that I am the victim. Um, I'm not going to be prosecuted. I'm certainly not going to be arrested or anything like that. And, uh, I will tell you, um, that is simply Pollyannish thinking now.

Okay. Uh, I have had.  I have had cases where  there is, I mean, there is no triable issue of fact. I mean, this is about as clear cut as this gets, right? And the district attorney has still moved forward on a prosecution. Um, I've had other cases to be quite honest with you that, uh, there's some bad facts, right?

I mean, uh, You know, the client didn't necessarily use the greatest level of judgment. Um, and you know, with a couple of conversations with the district attorney, we were able to get a prearrangement dismissal. So, you know, it's every case is totally unique. And it's also, and this is something that a lot of people have a difficult time wrapping their brain around.

It's it's oftentimes zip code dependent. You know, people want to believe and I totally understand this. They want to believe that there is some degree of uniformity in the law and the application of the law. And that just simply isn't the case, right? Fact pattern. That happens in the Inland Empire may have an entirely different trajectory than the identical fact pattern that happens in Newport Beach or that happens in San Francisco, right?

And for those who don't know, the Inland Empire is in Southern California.  So yeah, and Newport Beach is kind of close to it.  Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, the demographics and the political realities differ in each of these different jurisdictions.

And, uh, you know, and there, there really is no one size fits all approach, right? And someone with a concealed carry permit, that's a statewide permit. So you can travel throughout the state while armed, but you're traversing into multiple jurisdictions and you know, what might seem utterly reasonable where you live may be utterly unreasonable where you're traveling to.

Yeah, that's just the reality. So, you know, I, I'll anecdotally, I'll just tell you this story. We had a, um, we had a client, this is probably about three or four years ago, uh, federal employee,  um, you know, in all of my CCW classes, I, I, I make an admonishment. You, you want to get concealed carry insurance.

I mean, this is absolutely essential. So, about six months after that class that he had been in had ended, Um, I get a call from him on a Saturday night. He's been involved in a road rage incident.  The occupants of the other vehicle called the police said that he pointed a gun at them.

 Orange County Sheriff's Department pulls him over on the five freeway and lo and behold, he has a gun on him, right? Um, he's got a concealed weapons permit.  So he says to me, you know,  I don't think that the district attorney is going to file on me.  What's your theory on this? And he said, well, it's their word against mine.

I said, well, yeah, it's sort of, it is, but, uh, they said you had a gun and  You had a gun, right? I mean, this is exactly the type of case that they are going to file on and it's going to probably go through what we call a preliminary hearing  as well. How much is something like that going to cost? And I said, a preliminary hearing is about 50, 000, you know.

And he's apoplectic. He's like, I don't have that kind of money. And I'm like, well,  so the next day I thought, oh, my God, I,  I know this guy went through my class. He probably took advantage and got, you know, concealed carry insurance. He's got CCW insurance. He's not going to pay a dime. I mean, the insurance company is going to cover all the costs of the litigation.

So  I texted him and I said, Hey, listen, my bad. I should have asked you last night. Yeah. Bye.  Did you take advantage and did you get CCW insurance and he simply texted back and he said no, I didn't think it was worth it. Oh, crap. Yeah, so, you know, the thing that I always tell people it's like, look,  I can understand I could get it.

I mean, if CCW insurance was going to cost, you know, 1, 000 a month or some, you know, huge sum, you really start doing a cost benefit analysis, right?  But most CCW insurance policies are running between 20 to 50 bucks a month. I mean, they're, they're not inexpensive, but they're not, you're not going to go bankrupt on this.

And, you know, they, and they, they cover everything. I mean, it's just, you know, Um, the other thing that I do want to mention, because again, a lot, this one of the issues I have, frankly, with the, um, with the, the industry name CCW  insurance is that it sort of presupposes you have a CCW and that is a mistake.

  There are, you know, of those 29 cases, three of them, the individuals did not have CCWs. They simply signed up for U. S. CCA insurance. Um, thinking that perhaps at some future date, they might get a concealed weapons permit, but they thought this was a good idea.  Um,  it's also not just simply legal defense for having used a gun.

It's for any act of self defense. So, you know, one of my cases, uh, was a fist fight.  Right? Ironically enough, the client was wearing his gun during that altercation, but he just simply thought that it would have been inappropriate, he was correct, it would have been inappropriate to use deadly force at this point, you know, a lower level of the force continuum could be used to stop the threat,  but he was prosecuted for assault, right?

I had another case where a client, he did not, he was a CCW holder. Did not have his gun on him. But he was walking his dog and, uh, you know, as things started to go sideways, he, uh, took the, it was a small little dog. He took the leash off the dog and he used the leash as a whip, you know, and, uh, was prosecuted, 

yeah, I know. Um, so, I mean, someone who carries a knife or carries a flashlight or carries, you know, OC spray, um,  Yeah, this covers you. Right? So it's a, it's something that I definitely, definitely think that if you've got the, if you've got the mindset to carry a tool to defend yourself, or if you have the mindset that if your life is threatened, you're going to use whatever means you have at your disposal, even if it's your own hands, then you should have CCW insurance.

Interesting. Or, or, or perhaps, like I said, a better way of phrasing it would be self-defense insurance. Uhhuh, . Interesting. Yeah. I didn't realize that. I just thought it was only for CCW. I think a lot of people feel that way. 'cause it, you know, I mean, like I said, it usually you find out about it when you're taking a CCW class.

Mm-hmm . Right. And, uh, I mean, even the name. You know, U. S. C. C. A. United States Concealed Carry Association. I mean, you know, that's usually the driving force, but it's not exclusively. It's it's used across a broad spectrum. So interesting. Yeah, the other. I had chosen a CCW safe for a while, um, and then, yeah, I need to renew.

So I was going to look at, you know, all the different,  choices too. But, uh, yeah, there, there are a few choices,  you know, to, to a large extent, I don't want to say they're all exactly similar because they're, they're, they're not. I mean, there are certain things that, you know, exist in one don't exist in the other.

Um,  for me. As a consumer  and a little disclosure. Okay, right off the very beginning here. Um,  so I had a case.  I'm going to say it's probably about 3 years ago where it was an expensive one. It was a, woman who used a firearm to defend herself during a carjacking in Los Angeles, um, shocked the guy.  The guy actually survived, but the district attorney in Los Angeles wanted to prosecute her.

Okay, and this was, this was a, I mean, we were, we were absolutely befuddled because it was like, there was just no way a jury is going to convict this woman. I mean, this, this is about his textbook, you know, righteous use of self defense as  it gets.  Um, but, you know, that was at the time it was that district attorney and, you know, there you go.

Um, but that case ended up coming to close to about 250, 000, you know, by the time we got our acquittal. Well, after we had successfully wrapped up that case. USCCA contacts me and says, Hey, listen, um, we really like it if you would start doing YouTube videos for us, um, you know, talking about developments in constitutional law or, you know, case law and stuff like that.

And, and I was like, like, you know, you guys are a nationwide brand. Your YouTube channel is looked at across the country. What, why is somebody in Minnesota going to want to listen to some bald guy from California talking about, you know, law, right? Oh, no, no, no, no. It's you. It'll be good.  So, honestly, out of a sense of somewhat obligation, since I had just drained them, I was like, okay, fine.

I'll do one of the videos.  Well, that video went viral.  It got about, I think, close to 800, 000 views, so did another one. Most of my videos, typically, I'd usually do about one or two a month for USCCA.

They tend to average between 400 to 800, 000, you know, viewership. Um, so as I like to tell my wife, I am officially an influencer now. Yeah, that's funny. But a lot of people mistakenly believe that I work for USC. Sure. I'm on their channel. Right. And I want to make that very clear. I don't. Okay. The only time I ever get paid is when I bill them.

Yeah.  Got it. Um,  but. You know, that being said, um, as a consumer, when I'm looking at an insurance company, whether it's a homeowner's insurance company or, um, I'm looking for a robust level of capitalization on the part of the company, you know, if they have a finite pool of resources and five of the insured.

Drain that pool during a calendar year, and I happen to be the 6th and they've run out of funding,  right? You know, I mean, that's kind of an issue. I think USCCA last time I heard, I think they have about a million members.  Well, you got a million members paying on average about 30 bucks a month, right?  Yeah, they're, they're doing okay.

 Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I think that's really important that you brought up the fact that this isn't just for firearm holders. So, a lot of my listeners and a lot of people who hire me to speak or take my workshops are not comfortable having a firearm and I completely understand that because everybody has a different story.

I chose 1 because I had a very.  crazy life story and a high level of threat.  So that's what I chose for myself, but I find that most people do not feel comfortable with that.  I just actually taught a course on the less lethal launchers. Like the burner. Yes. Yeah. I really liked the burner.

Um, and I feel it's a great alternative for somebody who would not.  Defend themselves with anything,  they want something a little stronger than pepper spray.  It's just really interesting for them to think about this and that if they did have to defend themselves and whatever they use a burner or pepper spray or a firearm or a stick or a two by four 

it's, it's. Look, once you've, once you've left lethal weapons, whether they be edged weapons or whether they be ballistic weapons, you've now sort of drawn yourself down into improvised or flexible weapons, right? And everything is a weapon. 

You'll, you'll note that in the second amendment, the word gun doesn't appear. Okay. Arms are just nothing more than tools that we're using as a method of force projection. That could be a gun. It's simply the most efficient tool that we have available to us.

But we're surrounded by  weapons.  All the time, right? We don't think of them as weapons, you know, we think of them as utilitarian objects like a glass or a coffee cup or something like that water bottle, but they're they're weapons, right? 

I mean, go back. Biblically rocks, right? You know, I mean, that was the ultimate force. Projection was the rock. Um, so, you know,  I think it's far more important to focus on mindset.

 You know, one of the things, especially when people come into Artemis and they go on our simulators and this, by the way, actually does happen quite frequently where someone will actually have shooting experience. Okay. They've gone to the range. They've gone through a safety class or Uncle Bob taught him how to shoot when they were growing up, whatever it was.

And, but they've only ever shot at paper. You know, that's it. That's their entire exist. They've gone to the range. They punched holes in paper,  and then we put them on a use of force scenario where they actually got to shoot at a person. These scenarios are graphic. 

It's, it's fascinating because.  The visceral response that people have, uh, number one, they realize that their defensive tactics skills are marginal at best, right? And they realize they have a lot to learn.  But sometimes you'll have usually men, to be quite frank with you, that, um, sort of have had a You know, kind of a macho attitude that, you know, well, of course I could shoot somebody and then they, they come off the simulator and they're like, I don't know if I could do this.

I mean, they, they have that moment and I've told people this before, look,  the Dalai Lama is way more spiritually advanced than I will ever be. Okay. Um, I cannot. Envision a scenario where the Dalai Lama would use deadly force in order to protect their own existence.  But that being said, the Dalai Lama does believe that his life has intrinsic value, and he would use some level of force.

In order to perpetuate his continued existence. Okay. It may be relegated exclusively to pushing the person  or knocking over a table so that he could potentially escape 

but he's going to use some level of force. And, you know, this is where we have to kind of like, Okay.

Divest ourselves from the idea of, you know, we're gunfighters, it's no, you're, engaged in the act of self preservation.  Um, now I'm going to get kind of philosophical on you for a second, but I think it's, you know, it's germane, you know, I always ask people,  um, okay, so where do rights come from?

Because this is all sort of predicated on the idea that we have a right to their arms. And as I've said, That doesn't just mean guns, right? 

So, you know, usually I'll ask the question, where do rights come from? And people will say, well, the Constitution.  That's not correct. The Constitution doesn't grant any rights.

The Constitution recognizes re existing rights. So, these rights existed before the formulation of the Constitution. It just, it just codified them. It recognized them. So if we continue to go back, we have to say, okay, well, rights need to come from somewhere. And, uh,  The most logically consistent way of looking at this, you, you can't look at the constitution in a vacuum.

The constitution and the declaration of independence are essentially intellectually joined as 1 document  in the declaration of independence.  Thomas Jefferson articulates  beautifully says there are certain. Inalienable rights. Okay, stuff you can't get rid of. Even if you want to surrender these rights to the state to have them regulate them on your behalf, you can't.

You're stuck with it. Um, he specifies three Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's not an exhaustive list. There could be more. Okay. It's amongst these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Um, now for this discussion,  life is the one that I want to focus on, right? So you have an inalienable right to life.

Or another way of phrasing was you have an inalienable right to continue to exist, right? You cannot surrender that right to someone else to have it regulated on your behalf. That was corollary to that. You have an absolute right to use violence in order to protect your existence. If it's threatened, you are entitled to use violence.

Now, this is where the devil gets in the details, right? Because, okay, how much violence was actually required? You know, was, you know, the physical pushing away of a human being is a violent act. Okay, now it may not necessarily be as life altering as Cutting them in half with a samurai sword, right? You know, but it's, you know, it's a violent act and we're on that continuum.

That's, that's where I come in, you know, that's where we sit there and we go before a trier of fact. And we explain that the actions of the defendant were absolutely justified because of the illegal acts. Of the individual that tried to attack them. And, uh,  that's where the show begins, so to speak. Right.

Right.  So I can, I can envision what my listeners are thinking right now. They're going, oh, crap. Now I need insurance for this too. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's funny. So, you know,  since we are talking about, I mean, look, there is a nexus to firearms, right? I mean, there's no getting around that.

Yes, you don't need. Yeah. Yeah. A gun in order to get self defense insurance. Okay, uh, but most people that have guns will end up being the ones that get self defense insurance. Um,  and the gun community,  really has gone through a fascinating demographic shift over the last well, really from the beginning of COVID until today.

 Honestly, I could tell you  if we were to go back to, say, 2015, and we were to do a political climate survey of the Second Amendment community,  yeah, I'd  say probably 80 to 90 percent would be politically conservative, okay, or middle of the road to, you know, politically conservative.  Post COVID that's completely changed.

Okay. I mean, it's become almost entirely egalitarian. Okay. We have clients at Artemis that,  that fall across the entire political spectrum. Okay. Um, the The idea of the gun owner in America being a 65 year old white male, you know, Protestant, uh, is just completely archaic.

Okay. I mean, it's just simply not the case anymore. Um, now,  that being said.  There are several different subgroups. Okay? You've got the tactical guy, right, who owns 400 Gucci guns and, you know, goes to the range with all of his gear on and everything else, right?

And then you've got the cowboy guy, right? And then you've got the more genteel, you know, uh, sporting plays shotgun guy. Sure, sure. And, and these, these groups really don't in intermingle very well. Yeah. I mean, they tend to be very dis disparate. 

But within this group, within these groups, there is the one sort of continuity about the whole thing is.  If things go sideways on you, you might go to jail and the cost of litigation is so expensive. Yes.

Yes. You might very well get stuck with a public defender. Yeah. I'm glad that you're making this point so people understand how clear that is.  It's really important. Yeah, and I know that everybody's going to want to know where to find you, or what is Artemis, so can you tell us that?

So you can, you can certainly find us online at adi. artemishq.  com. Um, that is, uh,  our comprehensive Artemis Defense Institute website. Um, I have a blog that goes out every Wednesday, and it's, uh, it's, it's publicly available on that website. 

People are always more than welcome to come in and for a tour, you know, it's, we are very different.

We do have a shooting range here on premises, um, but we are not a shooting. If you want to go just shoot, you go to a range  training facility. Got it. And you are in Southern California. So I'm going to drop all those links in the show notes. So people can check that out and they can go on a field trip.

They can go over there and love to have them come in. Thank you. We appreciate your expertise and you sharing that with us in this time here. Thank you for inviting me. I really, really appreciate it. Welcome.  Thank you.

  Thanks for being a fan of the Aware and Prepared podcast.  Don't forget to hit follow so you can catch future episodes. To join my VIPs who get each episode's lessons learned, resource links, and more, go sent directly to you.

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