Free Speech Movement Café Educational Programs presents a panel discussion in honor of Constitution Day:

The 2nd Amendment: American Society’s Interpretation Across Time

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  What does that mean for us today? Campus experts discuss and debate the current issues from legal, historical, and political science perspectives.

Monday, September 16, 6-7:30 p.m.
Free Speech Movement Café, Moffitt Library


Brian DeLay 

Brian DeLay is an associate professor of history at UC Berkeley and the author of War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (Yale University Press). DeLay’s current work concerns guns and power in the Americas. He is writing two books. The first explains how the international arms trade shaped the Age of Revolutions, and the second excavates the relationship between guns, freedom, and domination in the Americas before World War II. 

Paul Pierson

Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley. He is the author of five books on American and comparative politics, including, most recently, American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper.

Franklin Zimring

Franklin Zimring was a member of the University of Chicago law faculty as Llewellyn Professor of Law and director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice. He joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 1985 as director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute. He was appointed the first Wolfen Distinguished Scholar in 2006 and served in that capacity until 2013. Zimring is the author or co-author of many books on topics including deterrence, the changing legal world of adolescence, capital punishment, the scale of imprisonment, and drug control.

Hannah Shearer

Hannah Shearer joined Giffords Law Center as a staff attorney and Second Amendment specialist in June 2016 and is now the organization’s litigation director. Shearer tracks and analyzes court cases involving the Second Amendment and manages Giffords Law Center’s amicus brief program, in which our legal experts participate in crucial firearms litigation as “friends of the court. 


This event is free, open to the public, and all are invited to participate. This panel is sponsored by the University Library’s Free Speech Movement Café Programs Committee. For more information, contact [email protected] or call (510) 643-6151

The Library attempts to offer programs in accessible, barrier-free settings. If you think you may require disability-related accommodations, including sign-language interpretation, please contact the event sponsor, [email protected], ideally at least two weeks prior to the event.