About us

The reason why we can wear so many hats is because we've been around such a long time, helping people protect themselves, and gaining experience with every additional year. As parents of two children who are now adults, for example, we speak from experience on matters of firearms safety in the home.

Paladin Services LLC was founded in 1996 by Dr. Joseph Katz and Janet Katz as a limited liability company to help people learn how to be safe and protect themselves and their families.

SLED-Certified and NRA-Certified Instructors

Both Janet and Joe are SLED-Certified South Carolina CWP Instructors and NRA-Certified Instructors in all major areas:

• NRA-Certified Pistol Instructors
• NRA-Certified Shotgun Instructors
• NRA-Certified Rifle Instructors
• NRA-Certified Refuse To Be A Victim Instructors
• NRA-Certified Personal Protection In The Home Instructors
• NRA-Certified Personal Protection Outside The Home Instructors (Basic and Advanced)
• NRA-Certified Home Firearm Safety Instructors

Training Counselors: Teaching the Teachers

We're honored that the NRA appointed both of us--Joe and Janet--to be Training Counselors at the same time. As Training Counselors we're both among the relatively small number of highly-trained and trusted instructors in the United States authorized to select, instruct, and certify other instructors in the knowledge, skills, and attitude needed to teach NRA classes. When you take classes from us you are working directly with the people who teach other teachers and certify other instructors. We're always on the alert to identify students who we can help grow into good, reliable, certified instructors.

Both of us--Joseph Katz and Janet Katz--are NRA-Certified Chief Range Safety Officers and Glock-Certified Armorers.

Teaching is not a sideline or hobby for us nor a passing interest. It has been our profession throughout both our lives. Together the two of us have a great many decades of fulltime professional experience as educators at many levels and in many contexts. Our proven skills include teaching, research, lecturing, communications, writing, designing, publishing, and creating instructional materials in all major media to help people do things and understand what they're doing. We enjoy helping people learn at every level and age, and we have focused our lives on it.

We're serious. We can do what we teach and we are highly trained in it. Our focus is on civilians. Although we do teach law enforcement and military personnel, our point-of-view is the lives and roles of civilians. Both Joe and Janet Katz are trained extensively in the defensive use of firearms by civilians. We both have completed many advanced tactical handgun and long gun courses from widely-recognized experts. We continue to take advanced and refresher courses.

Both of us have trained in the legal, ethical, and moral aspects of the Judicious Use of Deadly Force with Massad Ayoob, the renowned expert and expert witness in the field. We are Stressfire-trained by Ayoob and the Lethal Force Institute in both pistol and shotgun and are invitees to LFI workshops and reunions. Our instruction in the legal aspects of self-defense is informed by advanced training from nationally known experts. We are among the first Instructor Members of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network. But neither of us is a lawyer nor pretends to be one, nor will we give legal advice or counsel.

Janet and Joe are trained extensively in the defensive use of handguns and shotguns by Ayoob, Louis Awerbuck (Yavapai Firearms Academy) and Randy Cain (Cumberland Tactics). We have trained with Chuck Taylor (American Small Arms Academy) and Frank Cornwall (Defense Associates): when we teach the speed rock technique invented by Taylor and adopted by NRA for its Personal Protection courses, we teach it as we learned it from Taylor himself.

Both Joseph Katz and Janet Katz are Sustaining Members of the South Carolina Police Chiefs Association. We also assist the South Carolina Law Enforcement Assistance Program (an agency of the state's major law enforcement agencies: SLED; South Carolina Department of Public Safety; South Carolina Department of Natural Resources; and South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services).

Janet Katz also is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the South Carolina Chaplaincy for Law Enforcement and continues to serve. She has been featured in Women and Guns magazine, the national magazine published by the Womens Firearms Network. Janet teaches women's classes and provides individual instruction for women.

Joseph and Janet Katz both are Endowment Life Members of the NRA, and members of GrassRoots South Carolina and the Mid-Carolina Rifle Club.

Here's our bottom line.

We believe in--and firmly support--the fundamental right of people to defend their lives and protect their families. Despite shrill protests from those whose self-interest lies elsewhere, the Supreme Court of the United States in its District of Columbia v. Heller decision of 2008 reaffirmed what should be obvious to any rational person with respectable motives: self-defense is the natural right of individuals--an "inherent," "fundamental," and "natural" right--and so, therefore, must be the means by which we can defend ourselves.

And that is why we teach these classes. We don't cut corners.

E-mail us if you want to take classes with us. Please include your local telephone number so we can talk with you. We take a personal approach to our students.

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