Litigating the Second Amendment

Please join the American Constitution Society in welcoming Mark Anthony Frassetto, Senior Counsel and William Taylor, Senior Appellate Counsel from Everytown for Gun Safety to discuss how the Second Amendment jurisprudence has changed from District of Columbia v. Heller until today and their work on the subject. 

Mark manages Everytown’s Second Amendment litigation amicus program. He has drafted amicus briefs defending gun safety laws in courts across the country, including: the United States Supreme Court, the First, Fourth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and D.C. Circuits, United States District Courts in: the District of Massachusetts, Northern District of New York, District of Columbia, Northern District of Georgia, Western District of Michigan, Central District of California and Eastern District of California, the Wisconsin Intermediate Court of Appeals and the Florida Supreme Court. Mark’s scholarship focuses on this history of firearms regulation in the United States and Great Britain. His work forms the basis of the originalist defense of most firearms laws and has been widely cited. Prior to joining Everytown, Mark was a fellow in the New York County District Attorney’s Office in the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau where he investigated and prosecuted credit card and check fraud, stalking, computer hacking and theft. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.

William joined Everytown as a Senior Counsel focusing on Second Amendment litigation in March 2018. Before then, he served, for more than five years, as an Assistant Attorney General in the Litigation Bureau at the New York Attorney General’s Office, where he represented the state and its agencies and officers in a wide variety of civil actions, with a particular focus on Second Amendment litigation. Bill was lead counsel in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Cuomo, in which the district court upheld New York’s restrictions on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines against a Second Amendment challenge, a decision later affirmed on appeal. In recognition of his work in defense of the State of New York on gun litigation, William received the 2016 Louis J. Lefkowitz Memorial Award for outstanding performance as an Assistant Attorney General. William previously worked for over a decade as a litigator at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in New York City, where he had a broad general litigation practice, across a variety of civil matters, at both trial and appellate levels. He also served as a law clerk to Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. William received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was Editor and Book Review Chair of the Harvard Law Review.