Emanuel Kapelsohn has been a firearms, tactics and use of force expert in trials across the nation, defending use of force cases in federal and state courts, in both civil and criminal trials. Work as an expert witness has made him integral to cases involving self-defense use of force, officer-involved shootings, gun accidents, hunting accidents, home storage of firearms accidents, product liability cases involving guns, holsters and more. He has worked for the prosecution on some cases and for the defense on others.
He is a certified shooting scene reconstructionist and also testifies about ballistics and firearms, human factors like tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, sensory gating and other phenomena associated with the psychological responses present in deadly force encounters. He has provided legal advice, training and expert witness services to federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Justice and others, big city police departments and several state attorney general’s offices. He is on a DOJ list of attorneys on call to provide immediate post-shooting representation to federal agents.
An attorney with a Pennsylvania firm, Kapelsohn started practicing law in 1978, holds degrees from Yale (with honors) and Harvard Law School, and has been an adjunct instructor at Indiana University’s criminal justice department.
He is an NRA endowment member, an active reserve deputy sheriff, and has for 29 years served on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI) and is the association's Second Vice President. He is also the author of over 100 published articles, and longer works including Firearms Training Standards For Law Enforcement Personnel, Standards And Practices Guide For Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors, and Safety Guidelines For Simulation Training.
Kapelsohn has long been influential in firearms training on a national and international basis, both through his Peregrine Corporation and as a firearms trainer for gun manufacturers including Glock, Mossberg, Para Ordnance and others, as well as directly for police agencies nationwide. He has taught police firearms instructor development courses for the NRA and for a wide variety of agencies. In addition to his work with IALEFI, he has worked with other police organizations including the American Society for Law Enforcement Training (ASLET) and the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA)
