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In 2019, Congress Finally Funded Gun Violence Research. Here’s How It’s Changed the Field
A Trace analysis of federal data found that the amount of money going to gun violence studies has soared since lawmakers lifted a de facto federal funding ban.
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What You Need to Know About the Venezuelan Gang That Texas Is Targeting
Gov. Greg Abbott has declared the Venezuelan gang a foreign terrorist organization and asked the Department of Public Safety to create a strike team targeting them.
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Neo-Nazi Telegram Users Panic Amid Crackdown and Arrest of Alleged Leaders of Online Extremist Group
An analysis by ProPublica and FRONTLINE shows a surge in activity on Telegram channels aligned with the Terrorgram Collective, as allies tried to rally support for their comrades in custody and sought to oust users they believed to be federal agents.
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FBI Data Shows Violent Crime Down for a Second Consecutive Year
Violent crime in the United States is down for a second consecutive year, with law enforcement agencies reporting significant declines in murder and rapes, according to a just-released report from the FBI.
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Gun Violence in Philadelphia Plummeted in 2024 − Researchers Aren’t Sure Why, but Here Are 3 Factors at Play
Recent data shows a notable decline in homicides and shootings in Philadelphia over the past two years. we know that there is no single explanation for the drop in gun violence. Rather, many factors at both the local and national levels could be playing a role.
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Online Extremist Threats: A View from the Trenches
Threats posed by online extremism are evolving— extremists are younger, using operational security, and adhering to non-traditional ideologies. Understanding these trends is imperative for the professionals charged with mitigating them.
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Safe Storage and Minimum Age Gun Laws Would Curb Violence, Study Says
A new report found that minimum age requirements for purchasing firearms appear to reduce suicides among young people. Additionally, it indicated that laws aimed at reducing children’s access to stored guns may also lower rates of firearm suicides, unintentional shootings and firearm homicides among youth. Layering a variety of firearm policies might work best to prevent deaths, researchers say.
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Trump’s Second Assassination Attempt Is Shocking, but Attempts on Presidents’ Lives Are Not Rare in U.S. History
There have been 45 men elected president since the country’s founding. And 40% of them have experienced known attempts on their lives. Four presidents – Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy – have been assassinated.
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Study: AI Could Lead to Inconsistent Outcomes in Home Surveillance
Researchers find large language models make inconsistent decisions about whether to call the police when analyzing surveillance videos.
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Supreme Court Ruling Threatens Gun Charges Filed in Trump’s Alleged Assassination Attempt
A Trace review of federal court cases found that several defendants have had similar charges tossed out since the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision dramatically expanded Second Amendment protections.
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The Second Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump in 64 Days Is a Troubling Turn of Events
In American politics, the expression “October surprise” describes “a game-changing event that can irreparably damage one candidate’s chances and boost the other’s,” upending a presidential election. It is no longer hyperbolic thinking to consider that an October surprise may involve another assassination attempt.
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Murder of Dallas Police Officer Latest in String of Violent Sovereign Citizen Encounters with Law Enforcement
The murder of a police officer in Dallas last month by a suspected adherent of the sovereign citizen movement became the latest in an alarming rise of violent incidents this year involving individuals who subscribe to the extreme right-wing, anti-government ideology and law enforcement officials.
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Countering Deepfakes: We Need to Forecast AI Threats
We should consider more action to address new forms of criminality based on AI and other technology. As far as possible, we shouldn’t let these new forms surprise us. The government should organize a group of representatives from law-enforcement and national security agencies to identify potential or emerging criminal applications of new tech and begin working on responses before people are affected.
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Protecting Voters and Election Workers from Armed Intimidation
Although the United States is no stranger to political violence, our elections in the 21st century have been safe and secure. Rare events of violence closely covered by the media, but in reality, voter suppression by intimidation is much more likely to occur. While guns have rarely been used in elections to commit violent acts, they are increasingly being wielded as tools of intimidation.
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The Accelerationists’ App: How Telegram Became the “Center of Gravity” for a New Breed of Domestic Terrorists
From attempting to incite racially motivated violence to encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, the alleged crimes planned and advertised by extremists on Telegram go far beyond the charges facing CEO Pavel Durov.
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The long view
An Analysis by The Trace of 150 U.S. Cities Shows One of the Greatest Drops in Gun Violence — Ever
Gun violence is trending downward for more than three quarters of cities with the most shootings, according to a new analysis by The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub. The downward trend cuts across red and blue cities and states in every region of the country.
Trump’s National Guard Deployments Raise Worries About State Sovereignty
In two instances – Portland and Chicago – President Trump’s campaign to send the National Guard into Democratic-leaning cities he falsely describes as crime-ridden, has turned to out-of-state National Guard troops. Presidents who have federalized National Guard forces in the past, even against a governor’s will, have done so in response to a crisis in the troops’ home state. But the decision to send one state’s National Guard troops into a different state without the receiving governor’s consent is both extraordinary and unprecedented, experts on national security law.
Correctly Assessing Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States
A recent CSIS report, making sweeping claims about a supposed rise in leftwing terrorism in the United States, risks feeding false narratives about political violence and polarization. Michael Jensen and Amy Cooter write that the evidence used to sound this alarm consists of just five plots and attacks, and that these five events not only “are doing a lot of heavy lifting” in the report, but that they are given “an unwarranted level of causal and predictive power.” This tiny sample “simply does not justify inducing panic with eye-popping headlines.”