UW Firearms Research Center Wins Nearly $1M Grant for National Second Amendment Initiative

The Firearms Research Center in the University of Wyoming’s College of Law has received a nearly $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a national program that will provide secondary school teachers with nonpartisan, historically grounded content on the origins, legal interpretation and civic implications of the Second Amendment.

“Armed with Knowledge: A Nonpartisan Second Amendment Initiative” aims to fill a gap in contemporary civics curricula, furnishing educators with resources and tools to better understand the historical context and have modern discussions about the Second Amendment.

“The doctrinal complexity of the Second Amendment is too often obscured by divisive discourse,” says UW College of Law Professor George Mocsary, the Firearms Research Center’s director and co-author of the first-ever law casebook on the Second Amendment, “Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy.” “We seek to provide a much-needed apolitical approach to an otherwise politically charged topic, emphasizing the legal and civic origins of the right to bear arms, connecting it to the early principles of the nation’s founding and examining its evolving role, through legal interpretation, in American culture over time.”

The two-year, $908,991 grant from the Department of Education’s American History and Civics Education Program will provide educators access to primary sources, instructional videos for the classroom, and the chance to engage with scholars who hold beliefs across the spectrum through regular webinars and an in-person conference. The primary goals are to enhance educators’ understanding of the historical development and constitutional framework of the Second Amendment; build educators’ capacity to teach difficult constitutional topics; and expand access to primary-source resources.

“Our project will honor the nation’s 250th anniversary by allowing educators to engage with the complexity and nuance of the country’s founding documents,” Firearms Research Center Executive Director Ashley Hlebinsky says. “As the nation approaches its semiquincentennial, the ability to not only possess an intellectually rigorous grasp of constitutional text, structure and jurisprudence, but also to respectfully discuss and debate with those who possess a range of beliefs, has never been greater.”

The initiative will be directed by the center’s staff and an advisory committee, including K-12 educators, scholars, public health experts and UW’s College of Education. The program will include an in-person educator conference for teachers from across the country; instructional video modules; webinars with bipartisan scholarly dialogue; and a free digital archive of historical legal sources.

“Through a deliberately layered program of professional development, artificial intelligence-assisted archival research and open-access instructional media, the Firearms Research Center will empower teachers to cultivate in K-12 students the habits of mind essential to critical inquiry, evidentiary reasoning and civic deliberation,” Mocsary says.

Established in 2023, the Firearms Research Center is a nonpartisan research institution with a mission to promote education, constitutional literacy and legal-historical scholarship regarding the Second Amendment. It regularly hosts conferences and webinars; provides digital learning resources to the public; publishes original research; and maintains a group of academic fellows with wide-ranging beliefs. The center also partners with law enforcement and other public health agencies to educate on firearms safety and suicide prevention.

For more information, visit www.uwyo.edu/law/centers/frc.html or email frc@uwyo.edu.