27th Annual National Firearms Law Seminar (Presented by the National Rifle Association Foundation)

John Sigler is a Past President and current Board Member of the National Rifle Association, where he serves on the Legal Affairs Committee, the Protest Committee, the High Power Rifle Committee (as chairman), and the F-Class High Power Rifle Committee (as chairman). He is a Trustee of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund and a member of the NRA Executive Council. A retired Police Captain, lifelong hunter, and active High Power Rifle competitor, John is a co-founder of both the National Firearms Law Seminar and the Delaware Association of Second Amendment Lawyers, which conducts the annual Delaware Firearms Law Seminar. He also served for many years as a pro bono Second Amendment lobbyist in the Delaware General Assembly. John holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice Administration from Wilmington College, an M.A. in Business Management and Supervision from Central Michigan University, and a Juris Doctor, Cum Laude, from the Delaware Law School of Widener University. He is admitted to the bars of Delaware, Maryland, and the Supreme Court of the United States, and recently retired from active practice after careers in law enforcement, general counsel service, and Chancery Court litigation.

Professor Mark W. Smith is a Visiting Fellow in Oxford University’s Pharmacology Department and a Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at Ave Maria School of Law. A New York Times bestselling author of eight books, he hosts the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel — whose educational videos on Second Amendment scholarship, history, and issues have been viewed more than 72 million times. His Second Amendment scholarship has been cited by federal courts and by attorneys in landmark Supreme Court cases including NYSRPA v. Bruen, Wolford v. Lopez, and United States v. Rahimi. A graduate of NYU School of Law and a former federal law clerk, Mark has lectured at Oxford University, Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and Princeton University. He was previously associated with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom and a partner at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman before founding Smith Valliere PLLC.

John Frazer is the Secretary of the National Rifle Association of America, a position he has held since 2015. He joined the NRA staff in 1993 and spent two decades in the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, including seven years as a federal lobbyist and six years as Director of ILA’s Research and Information Division. In 2013, he left the NRA to establish a private law practice in Fairfax, Virginia, representing gun owners, dealers, manufacturers, and importers, before returning as Secretary in 2015. He also served as the NRA’s General Counsel until 2024. John holds a bachelor’s degree in government and history from Bowdoin College and a master’s degree from the University of Virginia, and earned his Juris Doctor from the George Mason University School of Law (now the Antonin Scalia Law School) in 2008. He is admitted to practice in Virginia, the District of Columbia, and several federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States.

Professor Robert J. Cottrol is the Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School and Professor of History and Sociology in the Columbian College at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1995. A specialist in American and Comparative Legal History, he also teaches criminal law. His scholarship has been cited by the United States Supreme Court and by the Third and Ninth Circuits, and has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Boston University Law Review, and Texas Law Review, among others. He is the author or editor of multiple acclaimed books in legal history and the co-author, with Brannon P. Denning, of To Trust the People with Arms: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment (University Press of Kansas, 2023), which won the 2025 Thomas M. Cooley Book Prize from the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.

David B. Kopel is Research Director of the Independence Institute in Denver and a Senior Fellow at the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center and an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute. He is the author of more than 125 scholarly articles and 20 books, including the law school textbook Firearms Law and the Second Amendment. His scholarship and legal briefs have been cited in seven Supreme Court cases, by Justices Alito, Breyer, Kagan, Stevens, and Thomas, and in more than 130 lower court decisions. Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the Volokh Conspiracy, currently hosted by Reason magazine.

Jonathan Goldstein is a firearms law and election law attorney who brings nearly 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and business owner to his legal practice. He is a volunteer attorney for several firearms organizations including the NRA, an NRA-certified pistol instructor, and an active CLE presenter on firearms law and safety across Pennsylvania. In April 2025, he was elected to the NRA Board of Directors and serves as chair of the NRA Finance Committee and as a member of the NRA Legal Affairs Committee and a trustee of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund. He previously served as a non-director member of the NRA Board’s Legal Affairs Committee and on the NRA’s 2016 Nominating Committee. Jonathan holds both his undergraduate degree and his Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania, and is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Washington D.C., several circuit courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States — where his firm argued a case in the 2023–2024 term. Since September 2025, he has taught a course on Second Amendment law as an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Rachel Palmer Hooper is a trial lawyer and partner at BakerHostetler who focuses on criminal law and complex civil litigation. With particular skill in communicating complicated litigation for juries, she handles difficult investigations and constitutional and statutory questions in state and federal courts across the country. She draws on her experience as a prosecutor at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to formulate effective strategies for each client, and has led clients through extensive state investigations and multidistrict litigation where her understanding of law enforcement operations has proven decisive. Rachel’s practice reflects a commitment to giving clients the peace of mind to continue managing their businesses while she and her team resolve complex legal matters.

Stephen P. Halbrook is one of the most accomplished Second Amendment litigators and scholars in American history. A Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and a member of the Virginia State Bar, D.C. Bar, and bars of all federal circuit courts and the Supreme Court of the United States, he has been engaged in civil litigation and criminal defense since 1978. He earned his Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center (1978) and his PhD in Philosophy from Florida State University (1972), and served as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University, Howard University, and Tuskegee University from 1972 to 1981. He has personally argued and won three landmark Supreme Court cases — Castillo v. U.S. (2000), Printz v. U.S. (1997), and U.S. v. Thompson/Center Arms Co. (1992) — and served as counsel for 55 Senators and 250 Representatives as amici curiae in D.C. v. Heller (2008). He is the author of nine books on firearms law and history, including America’s Rifle: The Case for the AR-15 and The Founders’ Second Amendment.

The Honorable Jesse F. McClure, III was appointed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2020, Texas’s highest criminal court. From 2019 to 2020, he presided over the 339th District Court in Harris County, Texas. Prior to his judicial service, he served as a special prosecutor for the Texas Department of Insurance for more than seven years and as an assistant district attorney in Tarrant County for nearly 11 years. Judge McClure earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law in 1999. His career reflects a distinguished path through criminal prosecution, trial court adjudication, and appellate criminal jurisprudence on Texas’s highest criminal bench.

Francis G.X. Pileggi is the managing partner of the Wilmington office of Lewis Brisbois and co-chair of the firm’s Directors & Officers Litigation Practice, with a focus on high-stakes disputes involving corporations, shareholders, boards of directors, LLC members and managers, and other entity ownership and governance matters. He has also litigated groundbreaking Second Amendment cases and related constitutional issues in federal and state appellate courts on behalf of civil rights organizations, earning the Chief Justice William Killen Award for Distinguished Second Amendment Appellate Advocacy in both 2015 and 2019. He is the author of more than 1,000 published articles across corporate, commercial, legal ethics, and constitutional law topics; creator and maintainer of the Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog; and author of American Legal Ethics: A Retrospective from 1997 to 2018. In 2025, he was named Editor-in-Chief of the National Law Review’s new Delaware Corporate and Commercial Law Monitor.