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Do Guns Make Us Free? A book release event with Firmin de Brabander

This event has already happened.

Friday, May 22nd 2015

7:30 pm

Red Emma's

Possibly the most emotionally charged debate taking place in the United States today centers on the Second Amendment to the Constitution and the rights of citizens to bear arms. In the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut, the gun rights movement, headed by the National Rifle Association, appears more intractable than ever in its fight against gun control laws. The core argument of Second Amendment advocates is that the proliferation of firearms is essential to maintaining freedom in America, providing private citizens with a defense against possible government tyranny, and thus safeguarding all our other rights. But is this argument valid? Do guns indeed make us free? We're thrilled to host a talk by author and MICA faculty member Firmin de Brabander, whose new book, Do Guns Make Us Free? Democracy and the Armed Society is out this month from Yale University Press. Talk begins at 7:30, but please join us at 6:30PM for a reception to celebrate the book's release.

About the author:

Firmin DeBrabander teaches Philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. He specializes in moral and political philosophy, the history of Western philosophy, and philosophy of religion, with interests in economic theory and environmental ethics. He studied at Boston College and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium before receiving his Ph.D. from Emory University in 2002.

Firmin has taught at Morgan State University, Towson University, Notre Dame of Maryland University and was a Visiting Associate Professor at Boston College from 2005-7. In 2007, Firmin’s Spinoza and the Stoics was published by Continuum Press (now Bloomsbury). In 2015, Yale University Press released his book Do Guns Make us Free? Additionally, Firmin wrote a chapter in the book Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations, published by Cambridge University Press in 2005, and has written two more chapters for anthologies being published in 2015.

Firmin has written numerous pieces in social and political commentary for various periodicals and publications, including The Baltimore Sun, The Atlantic, Inside Higher Ed, The New York Times and Common Dreams. Since 2007, Firmin has organized MICA’s popular Constitution Day Conference for many years, devoted to various significant and timely civil rights issues, including Freedom of Assembly, Marriage Equality, Free Speech in the Digital Age, and Surveillance. Speakers have included Ralph Nader, Helen Thomas, Jesse Jackson, John Waters, Andrew Sullivan, Amy Goodman, Angela Davis, Cornel West, David Simon, Daniel Ellsberg, and Melissa Harris Perry.

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