Author Event:Firmin DeBrabander
Date and Time
Aug 30, 2015 6:30 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Aug 30, 2015 6:30 pm
450K
Join author Firmin DeBrabander as he discusses and signs his book Do Guns Make Us Free?
In Do Guns Make Us Free?, moral philosopher Firmin DeBrabander puts this claim under the microscope, examining the ways the proliferation of guns impacts freedom. He finds that a heavily armed citizenry concretely diminishes core freedoms for all of us. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and other pillars of American democracy are threatened by widespread and poorly regulated weapons. Children, for example, are less free when they must attend schools with armed security guards, metal detectors, and backpack checks. We are all less free when the places we gather—movie theatres, college campuses, supermarkets—can easily become sites for gun violence, and when video surveillance seems necessary to preserve safety in our places of business and on our street corners. We are less free to speak our minds when we know the person we disagree with might be carrying a concealed weapon, as is legal in 50 states. We are less free from fear and intimidation when citizens can carry visible deadly weapons in our public spaces. And when Stand Your Ground laws in thirty states give an armed citizen the legal right to kill anyone he perceives as an immediate danger, we must be vigilant about the ways we present ourselves in public.
Firmin DeBrabander, an associate professor of philosophy at Maryland Institute College of Art, has written social and political commentary for numerous publications, including the Baltimore Sun, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, and the New York Times. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
Free and open to all!
Books will be for sale at the bookstore on the day of the event.
