• Broader gun restrictions reduce intimate partner homicides

    State laws that restrict gun ownership among domestic abusers and others with violent histories appear to significantly reduce intimate partner homicides, indicates a groundbreaking national study. The findings, which come on the heels of the Texas church massacre by a man with a history of domestic violence, suggest state laws with broader gun restrictions are more effective at preventing homicides among romantic partners – even if the laws do not exclusively target domestic abuse.

  • What the latest FBI data do and do not tell us about hate crimes in the U.S.

    This November, the FBI released its annual report of hate crimes for 2016. Overall, the FBI data show that the rates of reported hate crimes in the U.S. have gone up slightly. But other evidence suggests that the actual number of hate crime incidents is likely even higher. Although the FBI’s data are likely inconclusive on the actual number of hate crimes, they do point to a troubling trend that hate crimes appear to be on the rise and remain vastly undocumented and unenforced. Without accurate federal data on hate crimes, we cannot know if federal and local law enforcement agencies are addressing the needs of all of their constituents. This is crucial, particularly given that the DOJ study shows that law enforcement agencies often fail to adequately prosecute perpetrators of hate crimes. Failure to record hate crimes leaves us guessing at the causes of the rise in anti-Muslim violence we’ve seen in the past year.

  • Proactive policing successful at reducing crime; role of racial bias unclear

    A number of strategies used by the police to proactively prevent crimes have proved to be successful at crime reduction, at least in the short term, and most strategies do not harm communities’ attitudes toward police, finds a new report by the National Academies of Sciences. However, the committee that conducted the study and wrote the report said there is insufficient evidence to draw strong conclusions on the potential role of racial bias in the use of proactive policing strategies.

  • Economically stressed white male gun owners: Emotionally attached to guns, likely to justify violence against U.S. government: Study

    White male gun owners who have lost, or fear losing, their economic footing tend to feel morally and emotionally attached to their guns, according to a Baylor University study. This segment of the population also is most likely to say that violence against the U.S. government is sometimes justified. “This speaks to the belief in some ‘dark state’ within the government which needs fighting,” says one researcher. “What’s paradoxical is that white male gun owners in the U.S. see themselves as hyper-patriotic, but they are the first to say, ‘If the government impedes me, I have the moral and almost patriotic right to fight back.’”

  • Reducing IED threats: Commercially available precursor chemicals should be better monitored

    Policymakers’ efforts to reduce threats from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) should include greater oversight of precursor chemicals sold at the retail level – especially over the internet – that terrorists, violent extremists, or criminals use to make homemade explosives, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences. While retail sales of these precursor chemicals present a substantial vulnerability, they have not been a major focus of federal regulations so far.

  • Study examines gun-related deaths and how to prevent them

    A new study suggests various tactics for dealing with each metric of gun-related deaths. The suicide rate can be directly affected by decreasing firearm availability through safe storage practices, and the homicide rate may be decreased by preventing violent crime and deaths following a gun-related injury. Solutions for unintentional firearm-related deaths are linked mainly to education and safety precautions.

  • Most mass killers are men who have also attacked family

    What do most mass killers have in common? As a researcher who studies coercive control in intimate relationships, I can point out a few key characteristics. First, they are men. Additionally, they have a history of controlling and abusing their wives and girlfriends – and sometimes other family members – before “graduating” to mass killings. The laws in the U.S. that are currently used to address domestic violence were developed for attacks by unrelated people. They don’t work so well for what happens in families. If police wait for broken bones, they miss more than 95 percent of domestic violence incidents. The seriousness of partner violence derives from the cumulative weight of all previous abuse, rather than the severity of a particular assault – and to capture that cumulative weight of partner abuse we need to define coercive control as a crime. An average of 50 women in the U.S. are shot to death each month by a current or former intimate partner. While most domestic abusers will not become mass murderers, early, consistent and effective domestic violence intervention might keep us all safer.

  • Permissive concealed-carry laws tied to higher homicide rates

    Easier access to concealed firearms is associated with significantly higher rates of handgun-related homicide, according to a new study. The study suggests that current trends towards more permissive concealed-carry laws are inconsistent with the promotion of public safety. “Some have argued that the more armed citizens there are, the lower the firearm homicide rate will be, because the feared or actual presence of armed citizens may deter violent crime,” said one of the authors. “Our study findings suggest that this is not the case.”

  • At least 26 dead after worst mass shooting in Texas history at San Antonio-area church

    A lone gunman killed at least 26 people and injured many more at a church in Sutherland Springs. The tiny town was left reeling from the deadliest shooting at a place of worship in American history. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 72. The gunman has since been identified as 26-year old Devin Patrick Kelley. Kelley served in the Air Force and was court-martialed in 2012 for assaulting his spouse and their child. He received a bad conduct discharge, 12 months’ confinement, and a reduction in rank.

  • Is gun violence contagious? The answer is mostly “no”

    Is gun violence contagious? According to new research, the answer is mostly no. Rather, this violence is a chronic issue for particular neighborhoods and requires place-specific solutions. “It’s been known for some time that gun violence, like many other forms of crime and other social problems, can be clustered within certain neighborhoods,” says one researcher. “So when we observe that a particular part of the city has an elevated risk, how do we understand what that phenomenon actually is?”

  • Severity of firearm injuries increased over the past 20 years

    New research presented today at American Public Health Association’s (APHA) 2017 Annual Meeting and Expo revealed that the severity of firearm injuries has increased over the past twenty years, among those hospitalized for their injuries. Researchers noted that their findings have broad implications for public health beyond increased suffering on the individual level.

  • Protecting major sport venues

    Three major sporting leagues — the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Basketball League (NBA) — have played a key role in significantly upgrading and strengthening security at stadiums and arenas throughout the country with the help of the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s SAFETY Act. The Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies (SAFETY) Act incentivizes private sector investment in protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure and the public by providing liability risk mitigation and litigation tools for claims that stem from or relate to an act of terrorism where a SAFETY Act covered technology (called a qualified anti-terrorism technology) is used.

  • The Devil’s puzzle: Defining international and domestic terrorism

    It’s becoming a familiar scene. A vehicle becomes a weapon of terror. This time in New York City, where a driver in a rental truck suddenly careened down a bike and pedestrian path on the west side of the city on Tuesday, killing at least eight and injuring more than ten people. New York officials say it was an act of terror, and the incident is likely to reignite the debate on what constitutes domestic and international terrorism and whether it matters. An argument can be made that distinguishing between what constitutes an act of terrorism and what doesn’t still provide significant value.

  • Police were told of Adam Lanza’s plan to carry out school mass shooting -- 4 years before he did

    In 2008, four years before Adam Lanza went on a shooting spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the local police were told that he planned to carry out a massacre. The local police at the time, and legal experts since, say it is unclear what officials could have done to stop the attack at the point they were alerted to Lanza violent musings. All firearms in the Lanza home had been legally purchased by Nancy Lanza, whom Lanza shot and killed in her bed the morning of 14 December before going to the school and fatally shooting twenty children and six staff members. In response to a FOIA request, the FBI release a batch of heavily redacted documents – 1,500 pages in all – which also show Lanza’s interest in pedophilia, and his obsession with mass shooting.

  • Unprecedented levels of cross-border cooperation among extreme right groups: Report

    New research released the other day by ISD, a counter-extremism NGO, reveals increasing collaboration among extreme far-right groups globally. The report shows how extreme right groups have been opportunistically, and effectively, bridging ideologies and adapting their tone to manipulate legitimate social grievances – immigration, freedom of speech, and terrorism – in order to reach and radicalize mainstream parties and movements.