For what we believe to be the first time in the history of firearms journalism, the boss of a firearm media group is an experienced trial lawyer. Emily Long, Esq., has been in a leadership role, currently chairwoman of the board of managers and chief legal counsel for Bleecker Street Publications and Athlon Outdoors, since November 2023. She got an early start in trial law while still in law school and before she took her bar exam, interning with defense teams. In the course of her career Long lost count of trials she had taken to verdict when she had logged some 75 of them.

Athlon Outdoors’ Emily Long

She has been both prosecutor and defense attorney. Graduating from Michigan State University’s prestigious Detroit College of Law in 2006, she began her career as an assistant district attorney, working in the Oakland County (Michigan) prosecutor’s office. The daughter of an attorney, she credits her time in that office with teaching her the fine points of trial law not taught in law school. A little over 10 years ago was a landmark year for her in a couple of ways: she started a family and switched to private practice as a defense attorney. Today, the Martindale-Hubbell guide lists her as “AV pre-eminent,” the highest recommendation for peer recognition of ethics and professionalism. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Oakland County Bar Association.

Long has also done considerable family practice, where she became a strong advocate for the rights of battered women to defend themselves. She told me, “One of the cases I’m proudest of lasted five years and took us all the way up to the State Supreme Court of Michigan. It involved a child defendant, an indigent sixteen-year-old boy previously poorly defended at his trial. It’s satisfying to win justice for someone the system has treated unfairly. It can be difficult to access justice without money and means.”

Trial Law

Asked for advice on selecting defense attorneys for self-defense cases, Long replies, “Trial law isn’t learned in a classroom. It helps to have an attorney with a background in prosecution and/or law enforcement. You need a lawyer who understands how a defendant’s perceptions might be altered during a near-death experience – tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, distorted memory and similar phenomena which are well known to police and well-trained armed citizens, but are not taught in law school. I always had great relationships with law enforcement dealing with local police, Federal agents, and specialized units. Understanding their mindset and how they handle things really helped me when, for example, I was defending domestic violence victims who drew a gun to ward off their attackers.”

Long remarks, “If you ask the same question of ten different lawyers you may get ten different answers.” She adds, “Self-defense cases need to be boiled down to the factual details and the specific chronology of events. The defense attorney has to put each juror in the shoes of the defendant as much as possible.”

She explains, “Young attorneys sometimes overthink it. One of my cases began with jostling over a coffee pot! In a situation like that, the jury wants to know what happened, how things escalated, and why your client wasn’t at fault. You have to go into detail to explain that. One overarching mistake is not boiling the case down to its essence.”

Advocate of Training

Long has been through multiple shooting classes herself with instructors like Tom Alibrando, and is a strong advocate of training. “There’s not a lot of education out there,” she says. “Let me give you an example. I showed up to my first firearms class without owning a pair of pants that had belt loops. Nowhere had that been mentioned. Little things like that can throw off a first-time student. I don’t want to see one of our readers in a situation like that. I would like to see one of our new readers learn enough from our online content so that when they walk into their local gun shop they don’t feel stupid. “

Like many women, Long experienced condescending treatment in gun shops – the “little lady” syndrome. She says, “I’m proud that the experts give our articles such high marks for knowledgeable, valuable content. At the same time, I’d like to see us reach out more to the millions of new gun owners who’ve emerged in the last few years, many of whom are women, minorities, and others who don’t fit the old stereotype of ‘typical gun owner.’”

Good Hands

“We have lots of guns at home,” says Long. Some of her favorite guns are the IWI Tavor bullpup and the SIG Sauer P365 pistol – and, yes, she has a concealed carry permit.  

Bleecker Street Publications is in capable and understanding hands with Emily Long at the helm.