• Why Police Resist Reforms to Militarization

    Issues revolve around culture of viewing civilians as potential threats, concerns about self-protection in departments equipped with military-grade arms.

  • Places of Worship Linked with More Neighborhood Crime in Washington, D.C.

    A statistical analysis of areas near more than 700 houses of worship in Washington, D.C. found that these areas are associated with higher levels of violent and property crime—even after accounting for other factors commonly linked with crime.

  • U.S. Creates New Antisemitism Task Force

    Four out of 10 Jews in the US feel less secure than they did a year ago. Faced with an uptick in antisemitism, the White House responds with an action plan.

  • Three Ways to Prevent School Shootings, Based on Research

    We study the circumstances that lead to violence in which an attacker picks a target – like a person, group, or school – in advance. We find that the same patterns of concerning behavior emerge among the perpetrators, but that’s not all. We also find that there are often many opportunities to intervene with the perpetrator before the tragedy that peers, family members, school staff, law enforcement officials, and others miss.

  • ATF Director: Action Needed on Auto Sears Which Are“Flooding Our Communities”

    Fully automatic weapons are highly regulated, but the agency has recovered a startling number of machine gun conversion devices in recent years.

  • Farrakhan Predicts Another Holocaust, Espouses Antisemitism and Bigotry in Saviours’ Day Speech

    The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference in Chicago the weekend of February 24–26, serving once again as a platform for vitriolic antisemitism and bigotry.

  • 30 Years Later, Waco Siege Still Resonates – Especially Among Anti-Government Extremists

    The Waco siege and fiery end continue to inspire extremists. What unites many of the groups influenced by Waco is a belief that the federal government is tyrannical and willing to attack citizens while depriving them of liberty, freedom, and firearms. The perception of a lack of consequences for the deaths at Waco is perceived, in and of itself, as proof of extremist beliefs.

  • Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2022

    The number of U.S. mass killings linked to extremism over the past decade was at least three times higher than the total from any other 10-year period since the 1970s, according to a new report. “It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings,” the report says.

  • Violent Extremists Are Not Lone Wolves – Dispelling This Myth Could Help Reduce Violence

    After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks.

  • Bruen Decision Takes Gun Law Back to a Time Before ‘Domestic Violence’

    The Supreme Court introduced a historical test that is upending gun laws across the country. The most recent policy to fall: a ban for subjects of restraining orders.

  • Michigan State Murders: What We Know About Campus Shootings and the Gunmen Who Carry Them Out

    A gunman opened fire at Michigan State University on Feb. 13, 2023, killing three people and injuring five others before taking his own life. There have been nine mass shootings in or around college or university settings since 1966, according to The Violence Project database, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are murdered in public in a single incident. This would not include the Michigan State University shooting at this stage, or many other incidents in which fewer people than four were killed. It also doesn’t include the 1970 Kent State massacre in which four students were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard. In all the campus mass shootings in the database, the gunman was a man, with an average age of 28. The youngest was 22 and the oldest was 43. Six of the nine perpetrators were nonwhite.

  • Five Years After Parkland, School Shootings Haven’t Stopped, and Kill More People

    Since the 2018 Parkland attack, there have been over 900 shootings in K-12 school settings. Thirty-two were indiscriminate attacks apparently driven by the intent to kill as many people as possible, including mass casualty events.

  • Studying Gun Violence Is Hard. But Intervention Programs Need Research to Survive.

    Critics say there isn’t enough traditional academic evidence to justify government investment in community violence interruption. But the programs are varied and neighborhoods aren’t laboratories, complicating ordinary evaluation.

  • Are Mass Shootings Contagious?

    High-fatality shootings are becoming more frequent, raising the question of whether or not mass shootings are contagious, that is, whether or not one mass shooter copycats the actions of an earlier shooter. These questions arise especially when several mass shooting events are clustered in time. The evidence is not clear-cut either way.

  • Studying Gun Violence

    Otto Meisenheimer was a 21-year old college student when he was killed in 1977 in random shooting at a bowling alley outside of Chicago. His family has committed significant funds to establish the Center for the Prevention of Gun Violence in his name at Indiana University School of Public Health.