With an agenda featuring more than 70 speakers and a record-setting preregistration, the 33rd annual Gun Rights Policy Conference will convene this weekend in Chicago, attracting hundreds of grassroots Second Amendment activists and a Who’s Who of leadership in the gun rights movement.
Co-sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, this year’s GRPC will feature a keynote appearance by Kyle Kashuv, the pro-Second Amendment Florida teen survivor of the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
According to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, this weekend’s program features an array of panel discussions and individual presentations that cover all aspects of firearms politics and activism. The agenda includes appearances by members of the National Rifle Association board of directors and Gun Owners of America.
Also on the agenda is an appearance by former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling. He and Kashuv will share the spotlight during Saturday’s annual awards luncheon.
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The tentative list of speakers includes Gottlieb, SAF President Joe Tartaro, radio personalities Mark Walters and Tom Gresham, representatives from grassroots gun rights organizations in Illinois, Florida, Arizona, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere. Second Amendment attorneys will discuss ongoing litigation, and legislative experts will provide updates on state and federal legislative activities.
Other panels include one on outreach, reversing school disarmament, the proposed “assault weapon” ban, media and 3-D printing. Also expect some discussion about the ability of anti-gunners to raise and spend millions of dollars on political campaigns thanks to billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg and Paul Allen.
The Sept. 21-23 event will convene at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare near the airport. It will be the third visit to the Windy City for GRPC since the landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago nullified that city’s handgun ban. It has been at the same hotel all three times.