About us

Ours is the South Carolina Concealed Weapons Permit (CWP) and Basic Pistol class that reporter Corey Hutchins took in the Columbia, SC, area and wrote about appreciatively in "Point Blank" for Columbia's Free Times (June 24-30, 2009):

"Joe Katz told us that he hoped we never had to fire a gun in self-defense. He said we should never try and be a hero. But if the day ever came when our world broke apart, when there was some brutal force trying to take our lives or the lives of those around us — when our hands shook and our hearts raced — then we would remember Joe’s voice and exactly what he told us to do.

"If that day ever comes I will hear that voice."

Janet Katz especially enjoys teaching women, people with no experience, and anyone who is afraid or apprehensive about firearms. At the 2007 "Women in the Outdoors" event of the Wild Turkey Federation, for which she was asked to provide shotgun instruction, Janet taught women who had never before even held a shotgun and were frightened of them. After just a short time in Janet's calming presence and her evident skills those women grew confident and enjoyed the experience. It's who Janet is, what she does, and how she does it.

Janet was featured in Women and Guns magazine (July/August 2005), the national magazine for the Womens Firearms Network published by the Second Amendment Foundation, for her notable participation in a high-level advanced handgun workshop with Chuck Taylor, Massad Ayoob, and other well-known experts.

We have decades of experience teaching people
how to protect and defend themselves and their families

We've been here a long time, helping people protect themselves, and always gaining valuable experience with every additional year. We're serious about what we do and we work hard to do it right. As parents of two children who are now grown and adults, for example, we speak from our own experience on firearms safety in a home with busy adults and active children.

Paladin Services LLC was founded in 1996 by Dr. Joseph Katz and Janet Katz as a limited liability company based in Columbia, South Carolina, but with nationwide scope to help people learn how to be safe and protect themselves and their families in a complex, ever-changing world that can break apart for any of us at any time. We don't want it to happen to you and we'll teach you to avoid lethal confrontations. But if you can't avoid or evade the nightmare you will want our voices there to help you prevail. We know that what we teach you now could be the only help available then, when you desparately need to rely on yourself.

We are SLED-Certified Instructors and NRA Certified Instructors

Both Janet and Joe Katz are SLED-Certified South Carolina CWP Instructors. We also are NRA Certified Instructors in all major disciplines, including:

• 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

We also are Training Counselors and Chief Range Safety Officers

We're honored that the NRA appointed both Joe and Janet to be Training Counselors at the same time. Training Counselors are the relatively small number of highly-trained and trusted people in the United States who are 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 people appointed to teach other teachers and certify other instructors. As we have done throughout most of our lives, we're always on the alert to develop good, reliable, certified instructors. It's among the responsibilities we take most seriously.

We both—Joseph Katz and Janet Katz—are NRA-Certified Chief Range Safety Officers. Chief Range Safety Officers are certified to possess the knowledge, skills, and attitude essential to organizing, conducting, and supervising safe shooting activities and range operations. As we explain to our classes, safety is always our foremost concern. Both of us also are factory-trained, Glock-Certified Armorers. 

We are professional teachers and we continue to learn

Teaching is not a sideline or hobby for us nor a passing interest or just a job. Helping other people to learn has been our profession throughout both our lives. The two of us together have 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 learn things, 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 teach people how to protect themselves and their families

We are serious about what we do. We can do what we teach and we're highly trained for it. Our chosen focus is on personal protection and self-defense for ordinary people. Although we do teach law enforcement and military personnel, our point-of-view is their lives and roles as 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.

We continue to learn from experts

We are committed to lifelong learning. 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 also are Stressfire-trained by Ayoob and the Lethal Force Institute in both pistol and shotgun. And we 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 were among the first Instructor Members of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network and continue to belong. We sponsor our students for membership in the network. But neither of us is a lawyer nor pretends to be one, so we will not 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.

We actively support and assist organizations that benefit you

Joseph Katz and Janet Katz and Paladin Services LLC 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 is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the South Carolina Chaplaincy for Law Enforcement and continues to serve. Janet teaches women's classes and provides individual instruction to women.

On the national level Joe and Janet Katz—both of us—are Patron Life Members of the NRA, enthusiastically support it, and actively assist its training, education, and recruitment. On the state and local level we are members members of GrassRoots South Carolina and the Mid-Carolina Rifle Club. We sponsor our students for membership in all of those organizations too. Edmund Burke said it: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one . . . ." We stand together in support of our convictions and we invite women and men, the young and the elderly, good people of every possible description.

Here is our bottom line . . .

We believe in—and firmly support—the fundamental right of people to defend their own 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 with which we  defend ourselves and our ability to employ them.

And that is why we teach these classes and why we don't cut corners when we teach. We know that your life depends on it.

Now is the time to think about your bottom line

You won't have time to figure out what to do during a deadly force confrontation. You also won't "rise to the occasion." Nobody does, except in the movies, and often not even then. E-mail us if you want to take a class from us. Please include your local telephone number so we can talk with you first. We'll try to become the voice that guides you when you're alone and desperately need the help.

Top of Page