FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 04/02/2008

Debate On Gun Control Set For April 9 At BC

BRIDGEWATER, Va. — To control guns, or not to control guns?

That's one of the questions two nationally known writers, researchers and professors will argue on April 9 at Bridgewater College in Cole Hall. The 7:30 p.m. debate on gun control is sponsored by the W. Harold Row Symposium and is free and open to the public.

Taking the gun control side of the debate will be Franklin E. Zimring, the William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Distinguished Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He has co-authored 20 books, most recently American Youth Violence and Crime is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America.

Zimring will point out that, while guns are a small part of total crime, they are 70 percent of lethal violence. He will discuss the impact of New York City's 15-year violence turn-around with handgun scarcity as its central policy.

Arguing against increased gun control will be John R. Lott Jr., a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of the books More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, and has published opinion pieces in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune.

Lott will present evidence that crime of all types, and particularly violent crime, is significantly reduced when adults are granted the right to carry concealed weapons.

Bridgewater College, a private, four-year liberal arts college, enrolls more than 1,500 students. Founded in 1880 and located in the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, it was the state's first private, coeducational senior college.

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