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NEW YORK, NY, October 8, 2003- Best-selling author Richard North Patterson will headline a well-known list of experts in a debate on gun control on Tuesday, October 14, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Stiefel Reading Room at New York Law School, 57 Worth Street, New York.

Sponsored by the Law School's Justice Action Center, the debate will also feature NRA Board member and former Georgia Representative Bob Barr; Skidmore College Professor Mary Zeiss Stange, author of Gun Women: Firearms and Feminism in Contemporary America; and Jon Lowy, Senior Attorney of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. New York Law School Professor Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, will moderate the panel.  Patterson will be signing copies of his new novel, Balance of Power, after the program.

Patterson served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Ohio; a trial attorney for the Securities & Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco; and was the SEC's liaison to the Watergate Special Prosecutor. In 1993, he retired from the practice of law to devote himself to writing. He is a member of the boards of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Common Cause, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Patterson's eleventh novel, Protect and Defend (2000), about the controversial nomination of the first woman to be Chief Justice, and her entanglement in an incendiary lawsuit regarding late-term abortion and parental consent, became his seventh international bestseller and received a Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood for its treatment of issues regarding reproductive rights. It is now being developed as a feature film.

Patterson's twelfth novel, Balance of Power, which will be released on the day of the debate, confronts one of America's most emotional and divisive issues-gun violence.

Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, serving as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee. He occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union, serves as Distinguished Fellow with Lt. Col. Oliver North's Freedom Alliance, as a Board Member at the Patrick Henry Center, and is the Honorary Chair for Citizens United.

Stange is the author of Woman the Hunter, the first cultural history of the relationship of women and hunting, and has gained national recognition as the primary scholar working on the subject today. Gun Women: Firearms and Feminism in Contemporary America, a collaboration with psychologist Carol K. Oyster, deals with women's various positive relationships with firearms (self-protection, hunting, recreational and competitive shooting, careers like law enforcement and the military).

The Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence is a national public interest law program which provides pro bono legal representation to victims of gun violence, including-cities, counties, and other public entities-in lawsuits against the gun industry and assists in the defense of reasonable gun laws when they are attacked in the courts. Lowy litigates lawsuits against gun manufacturers, dealers, and owners where guns have not been made, sold, or stored responsibly. Among other cases, he is counsel for victims of the Washington, D.C.-area sniper shootings; counsel for several victims of the white supremacist shooter who terrorized minorities in the Midwest in the July 4th weekend in 1999; he was co-trial counsel for the plaintiffs in Dix v. Beretta (the first case to be tried alleging that gun makers have a duty to childproof guns); and is co-counsel in numerous other cases, including cases brought by several cities, including Washington, D.C., New York, St. Louis, San Franscisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Cincinnati, in their pending suits against the gun industry.

Contact: Jim Hellegaard, Director of Communications, Office of Public Affairs, 212.431.2191, jhellegaard@nyls.edu  

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