• Teacher talks a California high-school shooter into putting down his gun

    A 16-year old Taft, California high school student brought a shot gun to school yesterday, carrying enough ammunition with him to kill many people; after shooting and injuring one student in a science class, he shot the teacher, but the bullet only grazed the teacher’s head; the teacher and another staff member then engaged the gunman in conversation, allowing teachers in other classrooms time to lead their students out of the building; the two men persuaded the gunman to put his gun down, and he was arrested by the police

  • Biden hints at executive action on gun violence

    Vice President Biden on Wednesday said the White House could use executive orders to advance gun control measures. Biden held a series of meetings Wednesday in the White Housed on the topic of gun violence and the ways to reduce it; in a meeting with gun-safety and victims groups, Biden said: “There are executive orders, executive action that can be taken,” adding: “we haven’t decided what that is yet”

  • Florida university distances itself from professor's claim that Sandy Hook shooting was staged by the government

    A Florida university professor publicly questioned whether the Newtown, Connecticut shooting happened, or whether it was a government drill, forcing his employer, Boca Raton-based Florida Atlantic University, to distance itself from him; professor James Tracy also raised questions about whether the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting ever happened

  • Emergency management technology is customized for use in school security

    School shootings are a very real fear for parents and school administrators, and a Ohio company has customized its emergency response solution for use in schools; the Web-based system which gives first responders eyes-on access to critical situational information, such as maps, floor plans, emergency protocols, call lists, and real-time video feeds where there are cameras

  • White House considering gun-control measures beyond assault weapons ban

    Sources in the White House say the administration is considering a broader and strategy on guns control in the wake of the Newton, Connecticut, mass shooting; the approach being considered will go farther than a ban on certain types of assault weapons; the Biden task force, which will submit its recommendations to President Obama in a few weeks, is leaning toward adoption of measures recommended by the law enforcement community, among them requiring universal background checks for firearm buyers, tracking the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthening mental health checks, and stiffening penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors

  • U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki purchased tickets for 9/11 terrorists: FBI documents

    Within two weeks of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, FBI investigators had information that New Mexico-born jihadi cleric Anwar al-Awlaki had purchased air travel tickets for some of the hijackers; the information is contained in newly released, and heavily redacted, FBI documents; it appears that after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI, rather than arrest al-Awlaki, tried to work with him or track him for intelligence purposes, to see whether he would lead the agency to sleeping-cell terrorists still in the United States; Al-Awlaki was killed by a CIA drone attack in Yemen in September 2011

  • Newspaper hires armed guards to watch editorial headquarters

    A newspaper in Rockland County, New York offered its readers a map on its Web site which showed the names and addresses of all gun permit holders in Rockland and Westchester counties; worried about an angry reaction to the map, the newspaper hired private security guards to watch over its West Nyack headquarters

  • Gun training for teachers gaining in popularity

    Two hundred teachers in Utah are set to receive special firearms training —  with a plastic gun —  in order to carry concealed weapons in their classrooms in the future; in the aftermath of the mass shooting  in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, gun training and gun safety classes for teachers are drawing attention

  • Broader background checks, denial criteria may help prevent mass-shooting catastrophes

    Garen Wintemute, a leading authority on gun violence prevention and an emergency medicine physician at the University of California, Davis, believes broader criteria for background checks and denials on gun purchases can help prevent future firearm violence, including mass shooting catastrophes such as those that occurred at Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, and Columbine

  • In Oklahoma, even rumors of threat of school violence are taken seriously, and investigated

    Threats of violence in schools must be taken seriously, even if the threats are nothing more than rumors; in Tulsa, Oklahoma, police and school officials take every threat seriously, even if it is nothing more than gossip

  • Is stricter gun-control legislation more likely after Newtown shooting?

    An American politics professor, specializing in the relationship between public opinion and legislation, says that the relationship between mass shooting and gun-control legislation is not straightforward;thus, there was a spike in support for gun control after Columbine, but not after the Virginia Tech, Tucson, or Aurora shootings; “The Newtown shooting is different than those shootings in some respects, especially because many of the victims were young children. But the magnitude of this tragedy may not be sufficient to produce stricter gun-control legislation at the federal level”

  • What we know, and what we can do, about school shootings

    Since the early 1970s, school shootings at American elementary, secondary, and higher education institutions have been a painful reality for American society; after each incident — like the recent attack in Newtown, Connecticut — there is voluminous dialogue about what can be done to prevent the next such tragedy; a new study explores what we have learned about these tragic incidents, and what can be done to prevent them

  • New Mexican government to set up a new police force to fight drugs, crime

    Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto has said his government would create a new national police force as part of a new approach to dealing with drugs, crime, and violence; Pena Nieto took office on 1 December; the new, militarized police force would have about 10,000 officers initially, but would eventually grow to 40,000

  • Connection between goth subculture, mass shootings appears tenuous

    Classmates of the otherwise bland and elusive Adam Lanza, who last Friday killed twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook school in Newton, Connecticut, described him as “goth”; is there a “goth” connection in the Newtown school shooting? The question is asked because news reports have connected several perpetrators of both mass shooting and killing on a smaller scale to goth culture; a closer examination shows that the relationship between goth and mass shooting is tenuous

  • NRA shuts down Facebook page in wake of Connecticut shooting

    In the immediate aftermath of the Newtown shooting, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has deactivated its Facebook page, just one week after celebrating the fact that it has gathered 1.7 million “likes” on the page; the debate about whether the United States needs stricter gun controls continues, though