Introducing CSGS postdoctoral researchers Brennan Gardner Rivas and Evan Turiano
CSGS is thrilled to welcome two outstanding historians as postdoctoral researchers. Brennan Gardner Rivas and Evan Turiano will contribute to our project on “Firearms use and regulation in the 18th and 19th centuries: Modeling the Application of Historical Methods for Law and Policy in the Bruen Era.”
Rivas holds a PhD in history from Texas Christian University and specializes in 19th century American history. She has extensive experience conducting legal and legislative research, including using historic criminal records.
Turiano received his PhD in history from the CUNY Graduate Center. He studies 19th century U.S. history with a focus on slavery, politics, and the law.
“Dr. Rivas and Dr. Turiano with the assistance of historians across the country, are conducting an extensive, rigorous, two-year historical study of state and local firearms restrictions in selected jurisdictions in the United States across multiple regions during the period from 1750 to 1900,” Tucker said. “Due to the originalist turn by the Supreme Court, gun laws and policy around the country are being decided today on the basis of historical interpretation of 18th and 19th century gun laws. The study will help separate the facts from the fictions of gun history and will shed light on the needed historical methods and standards to guide future gun law and policy. This project will help achieve a more accurate and robust reckoning with America’s gun past.”
