How Should a President Be?: Firearms and Gun Violence
Join Us@250 Fellow Alexis Coe and Andrew Willinger for a conversation on firearms and gun violence.
Event
How Should a President Be? Alexis Coe, an award-winning presidential historian and New York Times bestselling author, has taken that deceptively simple question on the road for her fellowship project: A 13-stop nationwide tour on a variety of wide-ranging subjects, from historical memory to National Security. As an Us@250 fellow, Coe has been guided by three themes in anticipation of America’s semiquincentennial in 2026: Pride. Reckoning. Aspiration.
For the 13th and final stop on the “How Should a President Be” tour, Coe will be joined by Andrew Willinger, the Executive Director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Join Coe and Willinger on May 14th as they discuss presidents and firearms from George Washington to Joseph Biden–and the meaningful ways that largely unknown history can influence a modern president.
About the Speakers
Alexis Coe is a presidential historian and a fellow at New America. Coe is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington (2020) and Alice+Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (2014). Her next book, Young Jack: A Biography of John F. Kennedy, 1917-1957, will be published in summer 2025. She’s written op-eds, book reviews, and essays for most major publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post; and her work has been featured in countless others. She is a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, the History Channel, and NPR. Coe holds a graduate degree in American political history, was a curator in the Exhibitions Department of the New York Public Library, and serves as an advisor to the University of Georgia Press. She lives in Rhinebeck, New York.
Andrew Willinger is the Executive Director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. He writes and comments on Second Amendment decisions and issues related to firearms law. Willinger has been quoted and interviewed by CNN, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among other outlets, and his scholarship has been published by the Washington University Law Review and is forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review and the Duke Law Journal Online. He also writes regularly for the Center’s blog, Second Thoughts. Willinger graduated from Duke Law School in 2016. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.