• Most Americans support smart guns: Survey

    In 2014, the most recent year for which final data are available, 33,599 people died in the United States from gun violence. The majority were suicides (more than 21,000 deaths), and firearm homicides accounted for more than 11,000 deaths. Unintentional shootings, in which children are often the shooter or the victim, comprised more than 500 deaths that year. Survey finds that nearly 60 percent of Americans, if they buy a new handgun, are willing to purchase a smart or childproof gun — a weapon that is only operable in the hands of an authorized user.

  • How dangerous people get their guns

    The San Bernardino massacre is unique in several respects, but it does bring into focus an important issue with broad relevance: how do dangerous people obtain guns, and what should the police and courts be doing to make those transactions more difficult? Criminal assaults with guns kill thirty Americans every day, and injure another 170. The guns carried and misused by youths, gang members, and active criminals are more likely than not obtained by transactions that violate federal or state law. Unlike in the case of Enrique Marquez, a friend and neighbor of the terrorist couple who purchased two military-style rifles for them, it is rare for the people who provide these guns to the eventual shooters to face any legal consequences. Currently it is rare for those who provide guns to offenders to face any legal consequences, and changing that situation will require additional resources directed to a proactive enforcement directed at penetrating the social networks of gun offenders.

  • Canada avoids sex attacks by accepting refugee families over single men

    Canada’s immigration minister John McCallum said Canada will not suffer from Cologne-style sex attacks because the country “carefully selects” the Syrian refugees it takes in. McCallum said that because Canada has welcomed Syrian refugees “with open hearts and love,” Canadians will not be affected by their resettlement as Germany has been. “Most of them are not single men. Most of them are family members. Whereas Germany accepts everybody that comes to its borders,” McCallum said.

  • FBI antiterrorism unit arrests white supremacist for contract killing plot

    A leading member of a white supremacist gang in Louisiana was arrested by FBI agents over a murder-for-hire scheme. Jeffery Howard of Mississippi, a known member of the Aryan Brotherhood, was arrested Thursday. Federal authorities say he had agreed to execute a black drug dealer for $5,000.

  • Rate of violent crime in England and Wales rising

    A new method of analyzing crime statistics finds that violent crime in England and Wales is increasing, not decreasing. These findings contradict the official view that violent crime in England and Wales is continuing to fall.

  • What makes a “smart gun” smart?

    Throughout the 20-year-long discussion of “smart guns,” the topic has been a lightning rod for debate between pro- and anti-gun lobbies. But too often, there isn’t substantive knowledge of the underlying technologies, their appropriate use and their design limitations. Personalized weapons technology can make a contribution to reducing death and injury from accidental or unauthorized weapons use. It is not a panacea, but it can be an option for gun buyers to ensure their weapons never fall into the wrong hands. Smart guns are not science fiction and could be a commercial reality much sooner than later.

  • ISIS follower shoots Philadelphia police officer

    A man who shot a Philadelphia policeman while he was sitting in his squad car and wounded him, was inspired by ISIS. Edward Archer used a stolen gun to fire eleven shots at Jesse Hartnett in – but Hartman, despite being wounded, was able to get out of the car and return fire, hitting the gunman three times.

  • Mexico’s homicide rate has led to decrease in men’s life expectancy

    Mexico’s staggering homicide rate has taken a toll on the mortality rate for men — and it could be even worse than the statistics indicate. The homicide rate more than doubled from 9.5 per 100,000 deaths in 2005 to 22 per 100,000 by 2010. As a result, average life expectancy among Mexican men ages 15 through 50 fell from 33.8 years to 33.5 years between 2005 through 2010.

  • New York City settles Muslim surveillance lawsuits

    The NYPD has been agreed not to conduct surveillance based on religion, race, and ethnicity after charges that it had illegally monitoring Muslims in New York City. The city has agreed to settle two civil rights lawsuits for illegally monitoring its Muslim community following the September 11 attacks. As part of the settlement, in which the city does not admit to any wrongdoings, the city will appoint a civilian to monitor the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit.

  • Florida prof. claiming mass shootings were staged by the Obama administration is fired

    James F. Tracy, a Florida Atlantic University professor conducting a public campaign on social media, in radio interviews, and op-ed articles claiming that that the 2012 massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary and other mass shootings were not more than hoaxes perpetrated by federal officials on instructions of the Obama administration in order to rally support for gun control, was fired Tuesday. Tracy has made a name for himself in the more rabid conspiracy circles for repeatedly calling into question the very truth behind recent mass shootings like the ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Charleston, South Carolina, Aurora, Colorado, and San Bernardino, California. Tracy, in his blog posts and radio interviews, claim that these shooting never took place – or, if they did, that they were mere “drills” carried out by “crisis actors” employed by the Obama administration.

  • Oregon siege: the U.S. militia movement is resurgent – and evolving

    For several days now, a small group of armed men have occupied an office of the National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, 300 miles from Portland. There is of course a long history of distrust towards the federal government in America, one of which the militias of recent decades are acutely aware. Drawing on anti-Communist organizations of the 1950s and the paranoia of the Cold War, militia culture grew towards a fever pitch in the 1980s and 1990s. The popularity of this newly radicalized “paranoid style,” however, came to a sudden halt on the second anniversary of the burning of the Waco compound (April 1993), when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in what was then the most significant terrorist incident in American history, killing 168 people. The new coalition of anti-government activists, as represented by the people who seized the buildings in Oregon, is broad and ideologically diverse, and its principal spokesmen explicitly repudiate racism. Some of its leaders promote the goal of a theocratic society: The invasion of the wildlife sanctuary may also demonstrate the power of social media to do for American militia culture what Facebook and Twitter contributed to the Arab Spring.

  • Obama to end background-checks exemptions of gun shows, online gun sales

    President Barack Obama will today announce a series of executive actions aiming to close loopholes in the current system of background checks of gun buyers. The executive actions say it will focus on tightening the definition of those “engaged in the business” of selling weapons. Such tightening would deny online vendors and gun shows – where about 40 percent of all gun are purchased — exemptions from conducting background checks for gun buyers. Criminals and mentally ill people can now purchase guns through gun sellers who exploit the “engaged in business” loophole which was originally designed for hobbyists and personal sales.

  • Rail safety delays; Chicago’s trigger-happy police; killing Bangladeshi bloggers

    In October the Congress agreed to extend the deadline for installing the systems to 2018, but earlier this month Congress extended the deadline for deploying speed-control systems yet again, this time until the end of 2020; By June 2016, all Chicago police officers will be equipped with non-lethal Tasers. The move is part of a plan by city authorities to curb the sharp rise in the number of people – all of them African Americans — killed by police shooting; in 2015 alone, at least four pro-democracy bloggers and a publisher were murdered while others went into hiding, or fled abroad, prompting widespread calls for protection of free speech in Bangladesh from the threat of radical Islamists.

  • Calls for tighter regulations of the design of toy guns

    The death of people – often children – who carry BB or pellet guns resembling real weapons has prompted lawmakers and activists to call for tighter regulations on the design of non-lethal guns. California has already passed such a law, and it would go into effect on Friday.

  • Reducing deadly police force in Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere

    Researchers seek better strategies to control the lethal use of police force in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their findings offer insights for police and communities elsewhere, as the researchers are studying how social and psychological factors affect police and how body-worn cameras can be used most efficiently.