Opinions on USCCA
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OldGuysRule
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Opinions on USCCA
Hey folks! I'm new to this forum but not new to AZ or firearms. I'm a member of the NRA and AZCDL, but I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the USCCA. I have considered joining but have been a little put off by all of their advertising and give-aways. Are they a good organization? And do you know of other, similar groups that are strong advocates of gun rights? Thanks!
Re: Opinions on USCCA
Read this and then decide what you think. Turns out they may or may not pay out on their "insurance."
https://lawofselfdefense.com/uscca-sued ... um-member/
By Attorney Andrew Branca / October 24, 2019
A few caveats before I get to the meat of this topic.
First, we’re currently only hearing one side of this story, and that’s the side of the party suing USCCA (actually, they’re suing parent company Delta Defense, but given the nature of the relationship between the companies and the greater brand awareness of USCCA, I’ll refer to the defending party as USCCA for purposes of simplicity).
Second, in the interests of full disclosure: I’ve previously been professionally partnered with USCCA, and that partnering did not work out well from my personal perspective. Ultimately, I resigned from their Legal Advisory Board, on which I had been a founding member, and ceased engaging in partnering actives with USCCA. Indeed, I am currently partnered with one of their leading competitors, CCW Safe.
With that out of the way, the focus of this blog post is on a Federal lawsuit just filed against USCCA for an alleged failure to meet their obligations to one Kayla Giles, who claims to be a USCCA Platinum member.
We also, however, have access to the actual complaint filed int he US District Court in Lousiana. I’ve embedded that complaint at the bottom of this post. It’s important to not that the complaint is very much still only one side of the story. That said, it’s unlikely to be an utter fabrication without basis in fact, because of the rather severe sanctions a lawyer is subject to for filing a genuinely frivolous complaint in Federal court—specifically, a fine of up to $25,000 under 26 U.S.C. § 6673(a)(1). That’s on top of state bar sanctions for frivolous practice of law.
That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, because frivolous suits do still occur, but it suggests that it’s unlikely that the lawsuit is entirely without foundation (e.g., unlikely that Giles is lying outright about being a USCCA member).
The essential factual claim of the complaint are that Kayla Giles, who shot and killed her estranged husband in claimed self-defense, was a paid-up USCCA Platinum member at the time of that event. She was charged with second-degree murder for the killing of her husband, raised the legal defense of self-defense, and turned to USCCA for payment of her legal expenses under the terms of her Platinum membership.
As a Platinum member, she claims the right to legal compensation for criminal defense costs up to $150,000. Giles claims that although USCCA paid the first $50,000 of legal expenses, “they have thereafter refused further payment, despite amicable demand that they do so.” As a result, she’s now suing for the $100,000 remainder.
I’ll take a moment to pause here and point out that the complaint also notes:
Kayla J. Giles has incurred fees and expenses in excess of the amount of the ‘criminal defense’ limits of the policy.
Why am I pointing that out? Because the criminal defense limit of the policy is $150,000, and Giles has apparently already exceeded $150,000 in criminal defense legal expenses.
AND THAT’S BEFORE EVEN GETTING TO TRIAL. Her trial on charges of second-degree murder doesn’t begin until May 2020, more than six months from now.
That means the maximum coverage provided to her by USCCA as a Platinum member isn’t even enough to get her within 6 MONTHS of her trial, much less cover the trial itself.
Those of you who have been around the Law of Self Defense community for a while will know that this is a point I hit on all the time, good and hard—if you’re charged in a killing case, meaning murder or manslaughter, your legal defense will easily run deep into the mid-six figures, and perhaps much higher.
One of the reasons I’m currently partnered with legal service coverage provider CCW Safe (again, a competitor to USCCA) is that they place no cap whatever on the legal expenses they will cover for a legal defense of self-defense—including no cap on any appeals of a conviction in such a case.
If you’re considering two vehicles to take you on a 100-mile journey, and one of them guarantees you all the gas you need to complete the trip, and the other one only guarantees you a fraction of the fuel you’ll need—which one do you pick, all other factors being equal?
As mentioned in the promo at the start of this blog post, those of you interested in learning more about the “no limits” coverage of CCW Safe can do so by pointing your browser to:
http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe
Even better, if you decide that CCW Safe is the right fit for you, you can save 10% on your CCW Safe membership by using the discount code LOSD at checkout when you sign up.
OK, back to the Giles lawsuit.
As previously noted, we’re currently hearing only one side of the story, and I look forward to receiving USCCA’s response to my outreach to them, which again I’ll share here on this blog.
That said, it’s hard to imagine what the explanation for these claims would be, at least explanations that would be consistent with a “self-defense insurance” offering that I could recommend to clients and members of the Law of Self Defense community.
Was Giles not actually a Platinum member? Was she never actually signed up, or had she failed to meet her payment obligations and defaulted on her membership? If so, that’s a perfectly valid reason to not cover her legal expenses. But if that were the case, why cover the first $50,000 at all, as Giles claims they did?
Has Giles conceded criminal guilt in the shooting, meaning pleading guilty to the second-degree murder charge or pleading out to some lesser charge? That would also be a perfectly valid reason to not continue covering her legal expenses. But if that were the case, Giles would not have a trial date set for May 2020. A person who has already pleaded guilty does not need a trial date.
Was Giles in violation of some other facet of the USCCA terms of coverage when she used her gun in self-defense? I’m not going to step through the USCCA contractual language in this blog post, so perhaps that’s what has triggered USCCA’s claimed refusal to continue covering her legal expenses. If so, I would expect USCCA to announce that reason publicly.
Why would they announce an explanation under these circumstances?
Because if they don’t explain what’s going on in a manner consistent with being a “self-defense insurance” provider on whom members can rely for coverage of the legal expenses, they run the risk of being perceived as a provider upon whom members cannot rely.
The complaint by Giles, which is again embedded below, was filed on October 2, 2019, a full three weeks ago, which ought to have been plenty of time for USCCA to formulate a confidence-inspiring explanation of their side of the story.
One possibility that comes to mind is that USCCA chosen to adopt (perhaps without formal notice?) a policy of “we’ll cover members’ self-defense legal expenses … but only if WE think it looks like self-defense. If, on the other hand, WE think it looks like not self-defense, we’ll decline to cover.”
Now, in one sense, there’s nothing whatever wrong with this business model for a “self-defense insurance” provider. Indeed, one of the most respected providers of such services, the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, takes precisely that approach. When an ACLDN member is in a use-of-force event and seeks access to the ACLDN legal defense fund, their request is first reviewed by the ACLDN Board. If it looks like lawful self-defense to them, access to the legal funds is granted. If it does not look like lawful self-defense to the Board, however, ACLDN reserves the right to deny access to those legal funds.
There are two characteristics of the ACLDN approach, however, that make such an approach by ACLDN viable:
First, they tell you that any request for legal funds is subject to ACLDN Board approval before you ever become a member. Therefore you’re aware that Board approval is required for coverage of any particular use-of-force event, and also aware that such coverage may be denied, at the Board’s discretion. In other words, the contingency is made clear up front, rather than used to ambush a member after the fact.
Second, the ACLDN Board is unquestionably a genuinely remarkable people who are unusually well-qualified to make such an assessment. The current ACLDN web site lists their board members as including:
Massad Ayoob
John Farnam
Tom Givens
Dennis Tueller
and others whom ACLDN presumably considers similarly qualified. Yes, THAT Ayoob, THAT Farnam, THAT Givens, and THAT Tueller.
I can imagine USCCA reasonably adopting a similar “Board-approval required for benefits” approach, but ONLY if they met similar conditions. That is, first, that this condition of coverage was explicit—“we’ll cover you if WE think it was self-defense” and, second, if they had a similarly capable Board making that decision.
To my knowledge, neither of those conditions are true of USCCA.
Absent prior notification of a “benefits only if it looks like self-defense to US” condition of benefits, and a Board qualified to make such an assessment, any “self-defense insurance” provider who imposes such conditions after that fact must be considered unfit for it stated purpose.
After all, in EVERY case of self-defense in which legal expenses are being incurred at all there are TWO sides to the self-defense story. ALWAYS. The defendant is making a claim of self-defense. The prosecution is claiming they can overcome self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. The issue is in dispute. If it weren’t in dispute, there wouldn’t be criminal charges, and there would be no legal expenses to be covered.
https://lawofselfdefense.com/uscca-sued ... um-member/
By Attorney Andrew Branca / October 24, 2019
A few caveats before I get to the meat of this topic.
First, we’re currently only hearing one side of this story, and that’s the side of the party suing USCCA (actually, they’re suing parent company Delta Defense, but given the nature of the relationship between the companies and the greater brand awareness of USCCA, I’ll refer to the defending party as USCCA for purposes of simplicity).
Second, in the interests of full disclosure: I’ve previously been professionally partnered with USCCA, and that partnering did not work out well from my personal perspective. Ultimately, I resigned from their Legal Advisory Board, on which I had been a founding member, and ceased engaging in partnering actives with USCCA. Indeed, I am currently partnered with one of their leading competitors, CCW Safe.
With that out of the way, the focus of this blog post is on a Federal lawsuit just filed against USCCA for an alleged failure to meet their obligations to one Kayla Giles, who claims to be a USCCA Platinum member.
We also, however, have access to the actual complaint filed int he US District Court in Lousiana. I’ve embedded that complaint at the bottom of this post. It’s important to not that the complaint is very much still only one side of the story. That said, it’s unlikely to be an utter fabrication without basis in fact, because of the rather severe sanctions a lawyer is subject to for filing a genuinely frivolous complaint in Federal court—specifically, a fine of up to $25,000 under 26 U.S.C. § 6673(a)(1). That’s on top of state bar sanctions for frivolous practice of law.
That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, because frivolous suits do still occur, but it suggests that it’s unlikely that the lawsuit is entirely without foundation (e.g., unlikely that Giles is lying outright about being a USCCA member).
The essential factual claim of the complaint are that Kayla Giles, who shot and killed her estranged husband in claimed self-defense, was a paid-up USCCA Platinum member at the time of that event. She was charged with second-degree murder for the killing of her husband, raised the legal defense of self-defense, and turned to USCCA for payment of her legal expenses under the terms of her Platinum membership.
As a Platinum member, she claims the right to legal compensation for criminal defense costs up to $150,000. Giles claims that although USCCA paid the first $50,000 of legal expenses, “they have thereafter refused further payment, despite amicable demand that they do so.” As a result, she’s now suing for the $100,000 remainder.
I’ll take a moment to pause here and point out that the complaint also notes:
Kayla J. Giles has incurred fees and expenses in excess of the amount of the ‘criminal defense’ limits of the policy.
Why am I pointing that out? Because the criminal defense limit of the policy is $150,000, and Giles has apparently already exceeded $150,000 in criminal defense legal expenses.
AND THAT’S BEFORE EVEN GETTING TO TRIAL. Her trial on charges of second-degree murder doesn’t begin until May 2020, more than six months from now.
That means the maximum coverage provided to her by USCCA as a Platinum member isn’t even enough to get her within 6 MONTHS of her trial, much less cover the trial itself.
Those of you who have been around the Law of Self Defense community for a while will know that this is a point I hit on all the time, good and hard—if you’re charged in a killing case, meaning murder or manslaughter, your legal defense will easily run deep into the mid-six figures, and perhaps much higher.
One of the reasons I’m currently partnered with legal service coverage provider CCW Safe (again, a competitor to USCCA) is that they place no cap whatever on the legal expenses they will cover for a legal defense of self-defense—including no cap on any appeals of a conviction in such a case.
If you’re considering two vehicles to take you on a 100-mile journey, and one of them guarantees you all the gas you need to complete the trip, and the other one only guarantees you a fraction of the fuel you’ll need—which one do you pick, all other factors being equal?
As mentioned in the promo at the start of this blog post, those of you interested in learning more about the “no limits” coverage of CCW Safe can do so by pointing your browser to:
http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe
Even better, if you decide that CCW Safe is the right fit for you, you can save 10% on your CCW Safe membership by using the discount code LOSD at checkout when you sign up.
OK, back to the Giles lawsuit.
As previously noted, we’re currently hearing only one side of the story, and I look forward to receiving USCCA’s response to my outreach to them, which again I’ll share here on this blog.
That said, it’s hard to imagine what the explanation for these claims would be, at least explanations that would be consistent with a “self-defense insurance” offering that I could recommend to clients and members of the Law of Self Defense community.
Was Giles not actually a Platinum member? Was she never actually signed up, or had she failed to meet her payment obligations and defaulted on her membership? If so, that’s a perfectly valid reason to not cover her legal expenses. But if that were the case, why cover the first $50,000 at all, as Giles claims they did?
Has Giles conceded criminal guilt in the shooting, meaning pleading guilty to the second-degree murder charge or pleading out to some lesser charge? That would also be a perfectly valid reason to not continue covering her legal expenses. But if that were the case, Giles would not have a trial date set for May 2020. A person who has already pleaded guilty does not need a trial date.
Was Giles in violation of some other facet of the USCCA terms of coverage when she used her gun in self-defense? I’m not going to step through the USCCA contractual language in this blog post, so perhaps that’s what has triggered USCCA’s claimed refusal to continue covering her legal expenses. If so, I would expect USCCA to announce that reason publicly.
Why would they announce an explanation under these circumstances?
Because if they don’t explain what’s going on in a manner consistent with being a “self-defense insurance” provider on whom members can rely for coverage of the legal expenses, they run the risk of being perceived as a provider upon whom members cannot rely.
The complaint by Giles, which is again embedded below, was filed on October 2, 2019, a full three weeks ago, which ought to have been plenty of time for USCCA to formulate a confidence-inspiring explanation of their side of the story.
One possibility that comes to mind is that USCCA chosen to adopt (perhaps without formal notice?) a policy of “we’ll cover members’ self-defense legal expenses … but only if WE think it looks like self-defense. If, on the other hand, WE think it looks like not self-defense, we’ll decline to cover.”
Now, in one sense, there’s nothing whatever wrong with this business model for a “self-defense insurance” provider. Indeed, one of the most respected providers of such services, the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, takes precisely that approach. When an ACLDN member is in a use-of-force event and seeks access to the ACLDN legal defense fund, their request is first reviewed by the ACLDN Board. If it looks like lawful self-defense to them, access to the legal funds is granted. If it does not look like lawful self-defense to the Board, however, ACLDN reserves the right to deny access to those legal funds.
There are two characteristics of the ACLDN approach, however, that make such an approach by ACLDN viable:
First, they tell you that any request for legal funds is subject to ACLDN Board approval before you ever become a member. Therefore you’re aware that Board approval is required for coverage of any particular use-of-force event, and also aware that such coverage may be denied, at the Board’s discretion. In other words, the contingency is made clear up front, rather than used to ambush a member after the fact.
Second, the ACLDN Board is unquestionably a genuinely remarkable people who are unusually well-qualified to make such an assessment. The current ACLDN web site lists their board members as including:
Massad Ayoob
John Farnam
Tom Givens
Dennis Tueller
and others whom ACLDN presumably considers similarly qualified. Yes, THAT Ayoob, THAT Farnam, THAT Givens, and THAT Tueller.
I can imagine USCCA reasonably adopting a similar “Board-approval required for benefits” approach, but ONLY if they met similar conditions. That is, first, that this condition of coverage was explicit—“we’ll cover you if WE think it was self-defense” and, second, if they had a similarly capable Board making that decision.
To my knowledge, neither of those conditions are true of USCCA.
Absent prior notification of a “benefits only if it looks like self-defense to US” condition of benefits, and a Board qualified to make such an assessment, any “self-defense insurance” provider who imposes such conditions after that fact must be considered unfit for it stated purpose.
After all, in EVERY case of self-defense in which legal expenses are being incurred at all there are TWO sides to the self-defense story. ALWAYS. The defendant is making a claim of self-defense. The prosecution is claiming they can overcome self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. The issue is in dispute. If it weren’t in dispute, there wouldn’t be criminal charges, and there would be no legal expenses to be covered.
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shooter444
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Re: Opinions on USCCA
I carried some UCCA insurance for a year, when I thought politics were reaching a fevered pitch. But dropped it when I felt things cooled off.
Insurance, of any kind, is good to have when you need it,... but, a pain in the ass to pay for, year after year, if you don't! Or, as exemplified above,.... it can be a pain in the ass when you do need it!
Over the decades, I have come to one important factor, when purchasing anything,..."The large print giveth, and, the small print taketh away",.... as good ole' Tom Waits has taught me!!!
Insurance, of any kind, is good to have when you need it,... but, a pain in the ass to pay for, year after year, if you don't! Or, as exemplified above,.... it can be a pain in the ass when you do need it!
Over the decades, I have come to one important factor, when purchasing anything,..."The large print giveth, and, the small print taketh away",.... as good ole' Tom Waits has taught me!!!
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OldGuysRule
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Re: Opinions on USCCA
Thanks for the input. No ringing endorsements for the USCCA, apparently. With the NRA in turmoil, are there any other national organizations that are effectively advocating for the Second Amendment?
Re: Opinions on USCCA
Nope. Nobody else is even close to doing as much as the NRA even with all their problems.
It's the way it is for now.
It's the way it is for now.
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87jeep
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Re: Opinions on USCCA
The NRA has became self serving. They do not want the battle to end as they would lose their high paying jobs. Need a national organization like AzCDL. JMHO
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shooter444
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Re: Opinions on USCCA
87jeep,... do you really think the battle will ever, be over?
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OldGuysRule
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Re: Opinions on USCCA
So do I.
