• Keeping Guns Away from Potential Mass Shooters

    The United States currently averages twenty mass shootings per year. Researchers measured the extent to which mass shootings are committed by domestic violence perpetrators, suggesting how firearm restrictions may prevent these tragedies.

  • Germany Bans Neo-Nazi Group “Combat 18”

    The German government has banned the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, and the German police conducted raids across Germany, after links were discovered connecting the group to the killing last June of pro-immigration politician from Angela Merkel’s conservative party. Combat 18 is the armed wing of the Blood & Honor neo-Nazi network which was founded in Britain in 1992 and established its German branch in 2000. Europol has warned that the network is getting stronger in more than a dozen European countries. The group chose the number “18” for its name because these numbers are the first and eighth letters in the alphabet —A and H— which are Adolf Hitler’s initials. The group’s motto is “Was Es braucht” (“What it takes”).

  • “Phantom Effect”: Short Police Platform Patrols Cuts Crime in London Tube Stations

    A major experiment introducing proactive policing to London Underground platforms finds that short bursts of patrolling create a “phantom effect”: 97 percent of the resulting crime reduction was during periods when police were not actually present.

  • Inaccurate Dispatch Information Linked to Police Shootings

    A new study finds a relationship between inaccurate dispatched information about the presence of a weapon and police shooting errors, especially shootings of unarmed people. “Pre-event information about the presence of a weapon before an officer arrives on scene can have an enormous impact on officer decision-making, and consequently their actions,” says a researcher.

  • Caution: How to Measure Racial Bias in Policing

    Racial bias and policing made headlines last year after a study examining records of fatal police shootings claimed white officers were no more likely to shoot racial minorities than nonwhite officers. There was one problem: The study was based on a logical fallacy.

  • DHS Listed Climate Activist Group as “Extremists” Alongside Mass Killers

    A group of environmental activists engaged in civil disobedience targeting the oil industry have been listed in internal Department of Homeland Security documents as “extremists” and some of its members listed alongside white nationalists and mass killers. Those listed are five members of Climate Direct Action who formed what has been dubbed the Valve Turners, after closing the valves on pipelines in four states carrying crude oil from Canada’s tar sands on 11 October 2016. It was described as the largest coordinated action of its kind and for a few hours the oil stopped flowing.

  • Here’s Why Young People Are Attracted to Terrorism

    So why do young people continue to be attracted to the ideas of both Islamist and far-right groups? Nikita Malik writes that the decisions by young people to join the ranks of an Islamist or far-right terrorist organization are similar to the decision young people make when deciding to join a crime gang. “Due to similar motivating factors regarding recruitment and retention of members, gangs offer an appropriate framework to youth in terrorist groups. Therefore, there is no need to re-invent the wheel, so to speak,” she writes.

  • Ordinary Jihad

    In 2012, Mohamed Merah, a French self-proclaimed jihadist, and friends killed seven people, including three Jewish children outside their school, in several shootings in southwestern France. Since then, more than 260 people have died in France at the hands of Islamist terrorists. Many of the killers came from what what Bernard Rougier, in his book The Conquered Territories of Islamism, called “Islamist ecosystems.”

  • Don't Ignore Far-Left Extremists Even as Far-Right Violence Is Rising: German Police

    New Year’s violence between left-wing extremists and police in the eastern Germany city of Leipzig has created a heated political debate. “It is right and important to fight far-right extremism with all means, but that doesn’t mean we should disregard the left,” said Rainer Wendt, head of one of the two largest German police unions.

  • The Monsey Attack: What’s the Basis for the Federal Charges against Grafton Thomas?

    Grafton Thomas is accused of committing the horrific, anti-Semitic attacks in Monsey, New York last Saturday.  Marty Lederman writes that “One might have expected (I did) that the United States would have charged Thomas with violations of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 18 U.S.C. 249(a),” but that for some reason, “the government has instead elected to charge Thomas pursuant to a different criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. 247(a)(2).” “It’s… likely the government will be able to satisfy the commerce element of Section 247(a)(2),” he writes,” “but it would’ve been much easier for the government to satisfy the different commerce element prescribed by Section 249(a)(2).”

  • Lockdown: Living Through the Era of School Shootings, One Drill at a Time.

    Ninety-five percent of American schools now conduct drills to prepare students for a school shooter. Elizabeth Brocklin writes that “For adults who were out of high school by the time of the 1999 Columbine shooting, this is an unfamiliar phenomenon. We don’t have a clear picture of how the drills are experienced by the children they were designed for.”

  • Germany Restructures Police, Intelligence to Fight Far-Right Violent Extremists

    German government statistics show that in 2018 there were more than 24,000 active right-wing extremists in Germany, with about 12,500 of them considered capable of carrying out violent acts. The total number of these extremists is expected to increase in 2019 by as much as a third, to 32,200, according to government documents obtained by the newspaperTagesspiegel. On Tuesday, The German government unveiled broad new measures to restructure domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies in 2020 in order to make the German intelligence and law enforcement services more capable to fight the rising threat of right-wing extremism.

  • Click Here to Kill

    The idea of an online assassination market was advanced long before it was possible to build one, and long before there was anything resembling the dark web. Susan Choi writes that a threshold had been crossed: advances in encryption and cryptocurrency make this dark vision a reality: Journalists at BBC News Russia confirmed that on 12 March 2019, the first known case of a murder being ordered on the dark web and successfully carried out by hired assassins. The FBI and DHS are worried.

  • Germany Tightens Gun Control Laws

    The Bundestag has on Friday approved new firearm regulations, requiring gun owners to undergo a security check-up every five years, and justify their need to own a firearm. Hunters, collectors, and sportsmen will be exempted. Critics from the left said the law does not go far enough to deal with homemade weapons, while the far-right Alternative for Germany said the law would deprive thousands of Germans of their rights.

  • Despite His Criminal Record, Cody Wilson Is Back in the 3D-Printed Gun Business

    After an international manhunt, Wilson pleaded guilty to a felony in Texas court. But the particulars of his deal left him in a legal gray area that allows him to own and work with firearms.