Tuesday, November 17
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Registration Required Below
The Second Amendment: Guns, Gun Rights & The American Debate
Few provisions of the Constitution generate more passionate debate than the Second Amendment. What does it actually protect? How has its meaning evolved since it was ratified? And how should Americans understand the fraught arguments over individual rights, public safety, and constitutional interpretation?
Join us for a probing examination of the Second Amendment and America’s deeply contested relationship with guns during a conversation with Saul Cornell, a professor of American history at Fordham University and one of the nation’s leading authorities on early American constitutional thought and Mike McIntire, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author of Ricochet: Guns, Greed and The American Way of Violence.
The Second Amendment is only 27 words long, but its meaning has become the subject of an enormous legal, political, and cultural debate. The conversation will explore the history and interpretation of the amendment, the forces that have shaped America’s gun culture, and the ways in which the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have influenced the national conversation.
Join us for an engaging conversation about the Second Amendment, its place in the Constitution, and what it means in America today.
This virtual webinar will be hosted via Zoom. Registered participants will receive an invitation with a link prior to the program. Please include a cell phone number to receive a text reminder.
Our Panelists
Saul Cornell is the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History at Fordham University. He is the author of The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America (1999), winner of the Cox Book Prize and A Well-Regulated Militia: the Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (2006).
Dr. Cornell’s work has been widely cited by legal scholars, historians, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has contributed to numerous amicus curiae briefs in court cases involving the 2nd Amendment, most notably, he is the co-author of an amicus Brief supporting Washington D.C.’s hand gun ban. He is also a leading advocate of using new media to teach history and is the author of an American history text book, Visions of America. This groundbreaking work uses visual materials to illustrate the competing visions that have shaped American history.
Dr. Cornell received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and prior to Fordham, he was professor of history at Ohio State University and the director of the Second Amendment Research Center at the John Glenn Institute.
Mike McIntire is an investigative reporter, author and editor. As a member of the investigations unit at The New York Times, he shared Pulitzer Prizes in 2022 for reporting on the hidden financial incentives behind police traffic stops, and in 2017 for reporting on covert Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mike was part of a team that obtained and published Donald Trump’s long-concealed tax returns, a journalistic exclusive that earned George Polk, Daniel Pearl and Scripps-Howard awards.
Before joining the Times in 2003, he was the investigative editor at The Hartford Courant, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting, and was a Pulitzer finalist for investigative reporting on medical malpractice. A graduate of Hartwick College in New York, Mike teaches investigative reporting at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and was a 2019 Ferris Visiting Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
Our Moderator
Dr. Daniel W. Barrett is a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Psychology at Western Connecticut State University. A former resident of Redding, he graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University, earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Arizona State University and served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Health Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of the forthcoming Social Influence: Key Debates and Contending Perspectives and the author of Social Psychology: Core Concepts and Emerging Trends as well as numerous publications.