• Could International Pressure Ultimately Strengthen U.S. Gun Laws?

    American gun politics and policy have sway far beyond our borders. U.S. guns fuel cartel violence in Mexico, find their way to crime scenes in Canada, and are contributing to a rising gun violence epidemic in the Caribbean. Despite this global dimension, the influence hasn’t run in the other direction. A new organization that’s representing Mexico in a lawsuit against American gun manufacturers and dealers hopes to accomplish just that.

  • “Cascading Failures”: DOJ Blasts Law Enforcement’s Botched Response to Uvalde School Shooting

    “Cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training”: A long-anticipated 575-page report details the catastrophic leadership and training errors that led to delays in confronting a gunman who killed 21 people. The most significant failure was that officers should have immediately recognized that it was an active shooter situation and confronted the gunman, who was with victims in two adjoining classrooms.

  • Do Violent Video Games Numb Us Towards Real Violence?

    Video games have become an integral part of the everyday life of many children and adults. Many of the most popular video games contain explicit depictions of extreme violence. Concerns have been raised that these games may blunt the empathy of their players and could therefore lower the inhibition threshold for real violence. Results of a neuroscientific study suggest that violence in video games has no negative influence on the empathy of adults.

  • Do Gun Regulations Equal Fewer Shootings? Lessons From New England

    Gun rights advocates often point to low rates of shootings in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont to argue that you don’t need strong gun laws to keep violence in check. Here’s what the data actually reveals.

  • Security Officers at Nuclear Facilities

    Nuclear plants are sensitive facilities which require strict security measures to ensure the safety of both the plant and the surrounding areas. One of the essential components of this security system is the presence of security officers. There are nearly 9,000 security officers protecting U.S. nuclear plants. Presently the United Federation LEOS-PBA represents many Nuclear Security Officers working at nuclear facilities around the country.

  • What Can We Learn from the Nation’s Historic Decline in Murders?

    The U.S. endured a spike in gun violence during the pandemic, but it’s subsiding in many places. A researcher puts the latest homicide statistics into context — and warns lawmakers not to become complacent.

  • Are Ski Mask Bans a Crime-Fighting Solution? Some Cities Say Yes.

    Amid concerns about crime and public safety, at least two major U.S. cities recently considered banning ski masks or balaclavas to prevent criminal behavior, despite a lack of academic research about the effectiveness of such bans. Philadelphia is the latest city to prohibit ski masks in some public areas.

  • The Signal in the Noise: The 2023 Threats and Those on the Horizon

    We enter the new year with “blinking lights everywhere,” Austin Doctor writes. “From a U.S. homeland security perspective, the terrorism threat in 2023 can be summarized as diverse, diffuse, and active. In 2024, we are likely to continue to see signs of continuing shifts in the terrorism landscape—such as the threats posed by lone juvenile offenders, the malign use of democratized technologies, and ‘violent resistance’ narratives adopted across the extremist ecosystem.”

  • How Far-Right Terrorists Learned to Stop Worrying and Leave the Bomb

    There used to be a time that domestic terrorists favored bombing as their preferred method. “Today, however, the terrorists’ preferred tactic is the mass shooting,” Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware write. “Assault-style rifles have replaced explosives.”

  • Jan. 6 Was an Example of Networked Incitement − a Media and Disinformation Expert Explains the Danger of Political Violence Orchestrated Over Social Media

    The shocking events of Jan. 6, 2021 were an example of a new phenomenon: influential figures inciting large-scale political violence via social media, and insurgents communicating across multiple platforms to command and coordinate mobilized social movements in the moment of action. We call this phenomenon “networked incitement.” The use of social media for networked incitement foreshadows a dark future for democracies. Rulers could well come to power by manipulating mass social movements via social media, directing a movement’s members to serve as the leaders’ shock troops, online and off.

  • The Organized Crime Threat to Latin American Democracies

    Latin America’s democracies and democrats don’t get enough credit for weathering inequality, violence, and economic stagnation. Miraculously, only two of the region’s former democracies, Venezuela and Nicaragua, have collapsed into full-fledged authoritarianism. In no other part of the world have so many democracies held up under such pressures for so long. Governments have learned to manage many threats, but they are failing to curb the growing power of organized crime.

  • How Tennessee’s Justice System Allows Dangerous People to Keep Guns — With Deadly Outcomes

    Michaela Carter was one of at least 75 people killed in domestic violence shootings in Nashville since 2007. Nearly 40% were shot by people who were legally barred from having a gun.

  • Reports Analyzing the Police Response to a Mass Shooting Can Leave Unanswered Questions — if They’re Released at All

    Communities often rely on after-action reviews of mass shootings for a comprehensive and independent assessment of what happened. But even if an after-action investigation is released, a lack of national standards leads to wide variability in the detail of information in reports, an investigation found.

  • Research on Extremism in the U.K. Hobbled by Skewed Research Environment

    A new report, analyzing the research environment in the U.K. within which research on extremism takes place, found that there are problems in studying extremism and communicating the findings of studies of extremism. These problems have caused gaps in the knowledge base around extremism in the U.K. and a lack of research on specific extremist movements, especially Islamist extremism.

  • Tainted Applesauce Pouches May Have Been Intentionally Contaminated: FDA

    Cinnamon applesauce pouches available at Weis, WanaBanana, and Schnucks have been pulled from shelves after they were found to be contaminated with lead. The FDA says it currently believes the adulteration is “economically motivated.”