• 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

  • Breaking news: Gunman kills 27, self, in Connecticut elementary school

    A 20-year old Newtown, Connecticut man entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in town and began shooting; police says that, so far, there are twenty-seven dead and scores of injured; among the dead are twenty students and six staff members; most of the students were killed in the classroom of the gunman’s mother, who was also shot and killed; police reports that so far it appears that there is only one person injured who requires hospitalization

  • L.A. sued for detaining foreign nationals on “immigration holds”

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) accusing it of illegally detaining people for days, weeks, or months after they should have been released. The reason for the continued detention is that those detained are subject to what is called “immigration hold”

  • New high security police barracks opens in Maryland

    The new $11.3 million Maryland State Police Barracks has opened up in Hagerstown, Maryland; the facility features many security measures and can serve as a command center in the event of a major emergency

  • Syracuse University, city police to join forces to make area safer

    The Syracuse Police Department (SPD) has agreed to join forces with Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) to increase the police presence on university ground and the surrounding communities

  • Elected judges take tougher stance prior to elections

    The last few months leading up to an election can be a critical, political game changer. One right or one wrong move can quickly change a candidate’s standing at the polls; new research suggests that judges who are elected, rather than appointed, respond to this political pressure by handing down more severe criminal sentences — as much as 10 percent longer — in the last three months before an election compared with the beginning of their terms

  • Engaging kids in science for as little as ten hours a year improves math, language scores

    Researchers haves found that engaging elementary school students in science for as little as ten hours a year can lead to improved test scores in math and language arts; the students’ average percentile rank in math on a standardized test increased from 53.2 in the third grade to 63.4 in the fourth grade. The language arts percentile improved even more dramatically, rising from 42.8 in the third grade to 60.3