September 13, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Jim Kessler is policy and research director of Americans for Gun Safety where he is responsible for developing new legislative and policy ideas, as well as generating reports to further politically moderate positions on guns.  Before joining AGS, Mr. Kessler worked for twelve years on Capitol Hill, including eight years as Representative/Senator Charles Schumer's top legislative aide.  In this capacity, he helped pass both the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban.  Mr. Kessler has worked on numerous political campaigns and was instrumental in Representative/Senator Schumer's successful race over New York incumbent Republican senator Al D'Amato.  He also writes a political column for UPI.com. 

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at AEI. Mr. Lott has held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. Mr. Lott has published over ninety articles in academic journals. He is the author of The Bias against Guns. Previously, he has written More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws and more recently, a book on antitrust policy titled Are Predatory Commitments Credible? Who Should the Courts Believe?. Opinion pieces by Mr. Lott have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.

Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at AEI. A political scientist by training, he researches family, culture, crime, education, and welfare. Mr. Murray's major books are Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (1984); In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government (1988); The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (with Richard J. Herrnstein, 1994); What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (1997); and most recently, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (2003).

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