• “Red flag” gun laws linked to reduction in firearm suicides

    Risk-based firearm seizure laws – also known as “red flag,” risk warrant, gun violence restraining order, or extreme risk protection order laws – provide ways for law enforcement to seize guns from individuals considered to pose an imminent risk of serious harm to themselves or others. Nearly 23,000 Americans died in suicide incidents involving a firearm in 2016. A new study provides evidence that risk-based gun seizure laws are saving lives.

  • RAND to help oversee high-quality research on gun violence

    Every day in the United States, close to 100 people are killed by guns, and for every death, two more are injured. The gun-related murder rate in the U.S. is 25 times higher than the rate in 22 other high-income nations. About two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States are suicides. The RAND Corporation has been selected to help oversee a philanthropic fund that will support high-quality research on issues related to gun violence.

  • Gun violence research gets $50 million boost from private funders

    In one swoop, a new $50 million initiative to boost funding for gun violence research is poised to eclipse the federal government’s efforts to understand the epidemic. Experts in the field say the fund, created by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, could advance understanding of the causes and effects of gun violence and inform public policy.

  • Handgun purchaser licensing laws linked to fewer firearms homicides

    State laws that require gun purchasers to obtain a license contingent on passing a background check performed by state or local law enforcement are associated with a 14 percent reduction in firearm homicides in large, urban counties, a new study finds.

  • Stop-and-search report leads Scottish police to change policy

    Police Scotland has changed the way it carries out stop and search following a series of recommendations made by researchers. The researchers’ report highlighted elements of the pilot that can be regarded as good practice while also making nineteen recommendations for improvement. Police Scotland has published their response to this and other reports, highlighting the ways in which policy has been changed.

  • Guns in Chicago just “2.5 handshakes” away

    In one of the first studies to try to map a gun market using network science, researchers used the novel scientific approach to understand how close offenders are to guns in the city of Chicago. Recreating Chicago’s co-offending network of approximately 188,000 people, the researchers used data on firearms recovered by the Chicago Police Department to locate who in the network possessed those guns. The networked approach in the study suggests that one could map the risk of exposure to guns in a network and potentially use that as strategic points of intervention.

  • Every second matters during active assailant events

    Studies, event after-action reports, and most publications on the subject have proven that during Direct Threat attacks, most casualties occur in the first 120 seconds (2 minutes). An armed responder to the event arrives in between 4 to 11 minutes on average. It takes an additional 2 to 5 minutes before they enter the building and an additional 2 to 6 minutes to engage the attacker(s). Even if armed intervention is on-site, their reaction and engagement take minutes. The best solution to Direct Threat attacks must thus reduce the timeline of an attack to as close to zero as technology will allow.

  • Mass shootings influenced school architecture long before Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick questioned entrances and exits

    Architects and school safety experts say that campuses are already designed with minimizing death in mind — but that architecture can only go so far.

  • Moral rhetoric in social media posts tied to protests becoming violent

    Moral rhetoric on Twitter may signal whether a protest will turn violent. Researchers also found that people are more likely to endorse violence when they moralize the issue that they are protesting — that is, when they see it as an issue of right and wrong. That holds true when they believe that others in their social network moralize the issue, too.

  • Terrorists, criminals reap more than $43 billion a year from Latin America’s Tri-Border Area

    Terrorists and criminals are able to pocket up to $800 million a week or $43 billion a year from activities taking place in Latin America’s Tri-Border Area (TBA), according to a new report. The TBA is the rugged area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. It encompasses a river system stretching for 2,100 miles and crossing five countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

  • “The day that we can't protect human sources”: The president and the House Intelligence Committee burn an informant

    It wasn’t that long ago that both the executive branch and the legislature considered the protection of intelligence sources a matter of surpassing national importance. In 1982 Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which criminalized the knowing and intentional outing of U.S. covert operatives and intelligence sources whom the government is taking active steps to protect. So what happens, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write in Lawfare , “when the intentional outing of U.S. intelligence assets is the province not of rogue insiders, not of foreign hackers or foreign agents, not of people who end up spending the rest of their lives as fugitives, but of senior officials in two branches of this country’s government who are most responsible for protecting those assets” — and “when they do so for frankly political reasons?”

  • Five things to know about mass shootings in America

    At least 10 students were killed at a Santa Fe, Texas high school on May 18 after a classmate opened fire with a shotgun and a .38 revolver. The shooting came just three months after another teen shooter killed 17 in Parkland, Florida, sparking nationwide youth-led protests over gun violence – and a familiar debate over what changes could really make a difference. As a criminologist, I often hear misconceptions creeping into the debate that springs up whenever a mass shooting occurs.  Here’s what the research actually shows.

  • Children often ignore what they learn at gun safety programs

    Children who participate in gun safety programs often ignore what they learned when encountering a real firearm, according to a new study. The study found such programs do not reduce the likelihood that children will handle guns when they are unsupervised, that boys are more likely than girls to ignore gun-safety rules and that few studies exist of gun-safety programs for children beyond the fourth grade.

  • Active shooters caused nearly 750 casualties in 2017

    More Americans were killed or wounded by active shooters in 2017 than in any year since the Federal Bureau of Investigation began keeping track. All told, nearly 750 people were shot in 30 incidents, according to a newly released FBI report. The shooters were of different ages, from different places, and motivated by different grievances. But all were men, and all acted alone.

  • 3D printing of weapons: A threat to global, national, and personal security

    Additive manufacturing – also known as 3D printing — could benefit military adversaries, violent extremists and even street criminals, who could produce their own weapons for use and sale. As this technology further develops, and without proper controls, violent actors might be able to replicate more sophisticated weapons systems, print lethal drones, and even produce jamming devices or cheap decoys that disrupt intelligence collection.