• Officials Fear Disinformation Could Spark U.S. Election Violence

    With just one week to go until the U.S. midterm elections, a key senior U.S. official is expressing concerns that misinformation, or influence operations by U.S. adversaries, could ignite violence at the polls. For weeks, top officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security have said they have found no traces of specific or credible threats to the November 8 vote.

  • How Serial Killers Captured Popular Culture

    Celebrity, monster, antihero—the serial murderer has many faces in our movies, books, and shows, and we love them all.

  • Unexpected Trends in Gun Violence Revealed by Statistical Analysis

    Only a handful of U.S. states showed a surge in gun violence incidents in mid-2020 during civil unrest at the start of COVID-19 lockdowns and the murder of George Floyd, a new study finds.

  • U.K. Unveils New Counterterror Strategy to Address New Threats

    In the U.K. and overseas, there has been a shift towards self-initiated terrorists operating independently from organized groups with increasingly personal ideologies and warped views used to justify violence. The U.K. is updating its counterterrorism system is so it can continually adapt to new and emerging threats.

  • An Assessment of the Second U.S. Government Domestic Terrorism Assessment

    The recently released intelligence assessment of domestic terrorism is the second iteration of the Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism, and Seamus Hughes, Moshe Klein, and Alexis Jori Shanes write that “From additional granularity in the size and scope of the threat of domestic terrorism to a more forthcoming acknowledgement of its complexity, it should provide a road map for U.S. domestic counterterrorism efforts.”

  • The Business Case for Reducing Gun Violence

    While gun violence in the United States continues to claim lives at an alarming rate, it is also taking a quiet toll on the U.S. economy, according to new research. The research found that the toll of U.S. firearms injuries on the U.S. economy reaches billions of dollars annually.

  • Intrusive Surveillance and Interrogation of Portland Demonstrators by DHS Agents

    DHS surveillance of 2020 protestors in Portland, Oregon was broader and more intrusive than had previously been knows. DHS agents created individual dossiers on many of the protestors, dossiers which included lists of friends and family, travel history, social media postings, and other records unrelated to securing federal property or homeland security. Documents also reveal that Trump appointees at DHS endorsed baseless conspiracy theories in justifying what Senator Ron Wyden D-Oregon) called “violations of Oregonians’ civil rights.”

  • Relaxing Conceal Carry Permit Restrictions Significantly Increases Firearm Assaults

    The average rate of assaults with firearms increased an average of 9.5 percent relative to forecasted trends in the first 10 years after 34 states relaxed restrictions on civilians carrying concealed firearms in public. Researchers say that specific provisions in conceal carry laws may reduce risks associated with civilian gun carrying.

  • School Shootings Are Already at a Record in 2022 – with Months Still to Go

    With more than two months left, 2022 is already the worst year on record. As of Oct. 24, there have been 257 shootings on school campuses – passing the 250 total for all of 2021. Many of these incidents have been simple disputes turned deadly because teenagers came to school angry and armed. The rising annual tally of school shootings has occurred despite enhanced school security in the two decades since the Columbine massacre.

  • Tracking Threats and Harassment Against Local Officials

    Following the 2020 presidential election, there has been a growing wave of threats against and harassment of election officials. Nearly 60 percent these threats and acts of intimidation took place in the five states which Trump falsely claimed he had won: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

  • “Terror Granny” Charged with Plotting German Civil War to Bring Back the Kaiser

    A 75-year old retired theology professor was arrested and charged with organizing a nationalist, far-right terrorist group aiming to bring back the Kaiser. The group aimed to attack power stations and transmitters in order to plunge large parts of Germany into black out in the hope of promoting civic unrest.

  • Misuse of Texas Data Understates Illegal Immigrant Criminality

    Activists and academics have been misusing data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in studies when claiming that illegal immigrants have relatively low crime rates. These studies fail to appreciate the fact that it can take years for Texas to identify convicts, while they are in custody, as illegal immigrants. These studies thus misclassify as native-born a significant number of offenders who are later identified as illegal immigrants.

  • Self-Identified “Incel” Plotted Mass Shooting of Women at OSU

    A 22-year old Ohio man admitted he plotted a mass shooting of women at a university in Ohio. The man identified as an “incel” or “involuntary celibate.” The incel movement is an online community of predominantly men who harbor anger towards women.

  • Human Trafficking’s Newest Abuse: Forcing Victims into Cyberscamming

    Tens of thousands of people from across Asia have been coerced into defrauding people in America and around the world out of millions of dollars. Those who resist face beatings, food deprivation or worse.

  • Importing Even More Crime

    The number of encounters with illegal immigrants recorded by the Border Patrol in FY2020 was 458,088. In FY22021, that number increased to about two million. The number of encounters with illegal immigrants who already had criminal records in FY2020 was 2,438. In FY2021, it rose to 10,763.