• Deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history: at least 50 killed, more than 400 injured

    A 64-year old gunman barricaded himself in his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, then fired thousands of rounds from several automatic weapons on an outdoor country music festival taking place outside the hotel. At least 50 people have been killed and more than 400 injured at a country music festival in Las Vegas. This is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. The Las Vegas police reported that two police officers have been killed.

  • Six things to know about mass shootings in America

    America has experienced yet another mass shooting, this time at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is reportedly the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. As a criminologist, I have reviewed recent research in hopes of debunking some of the common misconceptions I hear creeping into discussions that spring up whenever a mass shooting occurs.

  • Israeli intelligence helped foil dozens of terror attacks worldwide

    Israel’s intelligence agencies have stepped up cooperation with their foreign counterparts leading to the prevention of dozens of terror attacks around the world. Following the coordinated terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people in November 2015, the intelligence branch of Israel’s General Staff made a decision to concentrate more on collecting information from foreign terrorists who had ties to Middle Eastern terror organizations.

  • White nationalists as much of a threat to U.S. as Islamists: FBI

    In a testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last Wednesday, FBI director Chris Wray said his agency was currently conducting “about 1,000” open domestic terrorism investigations. He said that, by comparison, the FBI also has about 1,000 open cases related to the ISIS. In its May joint intelligence bulletin, the FBI warned white supremacist groups were likely to commit more violent attacks. The white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year,” the FBI bulletin said.

  • White nationalists as much of a threat to U.S. as Islamists: FBI

    In a testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last Wednesday, FBI director Chris Wray said his agency was currently conducting “about 1,000” open domestic terrorism investigations. He said that, by comparison, the FBI also has about 1,000 open cases related to the ISIS. In its May joint intelligence bulletin, the FBI warned white supremacist groups were likely to commit more violent attacks. The white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year,” the FBI bulletin said.

  • America’s deadliest shooting incidents are getting much more deadly

    The mass shooting that killed at least fifty people in Las Vegas last night was the deadliest in modern American history. The shooting marked the latest outbreak of gunfire and bloodshed to erupt in a public place, transforming a seemingly routine night into one of terror and carnage. The killing in Las Vegas surpassed the death toll of forty-nine people killed in June 2016 when a gunman in Orlando opened fire inside a crowded nightclub.

  • DHS funds national consortium to develop better methods for fighting criminal activity

    The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has been named a priority partner in a new DHS-funded national consortium. SHS S&T S&T) will award the consortium a $3.85 million grant for its first operating year in a 10-year grant period to create the Center of Excellence for Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis (CINA). The center’s research will focus on criminal network analysis, dynamic patterns of criminal activity, forensics, and criminal investigative processes.

  • Antifa says it’s fighting Fascists. It just might be helping to re-elect Donald Trump.

    There’s no consensus of what Antifa, a contraction of “anti-fascist,” stands for, or whether their tactics will achieve their stated goals. The historian Ronald Radosh writes that the German communists used the slogan “After Hitler, Us,” and directed their energy and propaganda not against the Nazis, but against the mainstream socialists. “It didn’t end well,” says Radosh. Antifa emulates many of the actions of the German communists in the 1930s, villifying centrists and liberals who reject antifa’s commitment to violence.

  • Hospitalization costs of gun injuries exceeds $622 million a year

    Hospitalization costs associated with gun injuries in the United States exceeded $622 million a year, according to a new study. 57 percent of all firearm hospitalization costs were either paid by Medicaid—at more than $205 million—or not paid at all, as uninsured victims accounted for $155 million of the costs. More than 80 percent of firearm injury hospitalizations were among individuals age 15 to 44, with the highest annual rate of 28.9 per 100,000 among those age 15 to 24.

     

  • The focal point: White supremacy

    The weekend clashes between white nationalist demonstrators and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia., which killed a 32-year-old woman and injured others has reignited long-simmering fears that racist hate groups are resurgent nationally and now may feel emboldened to push their goals publicly. Bart Bonikowski, an associate professor in Harvard’s Sociology Department, has studied the discourse of populist movements in the United States and Europe, with an emphasis on the processes that animate nationalist political movements. He says that he doubts that he doubts that the widespread public backlash suggests these groups might dial back their incendiary efforts. “It’s hard to predict the future, but I doubt that this will be the case. As I mentioned, these movements thrive when they receive attention in the media, regardless of whether it’s good or bad. And in this case, they’re getting the media attention as well as support from the president. So, if anything, this is likely to give them an incentive to hold more rallies and become more extremist in their practices.”

  • The First Amendment and the Nazi flag

    In the wake of the 12 August confrontations between protesters and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, some progressives are calling for legal restrictions on the display of the Nazi flag. These arguments are entirely understandable, but they often misapply existing First Amendment law, and they suppress free speech values that progressives — more than anyone else — should want to defend, says a Constitutional law expert.

  • Detecting concealed weapon, threat is not easy, and experience is no help to police officers

    Detecting potential threats is part of the job for police officers, military personnel and security guards. Terrorist attacks and bombings at concerts, sporting events and airports underscore the need for accurate and reliable threat detection. However, the likelihood of a police officer identifying someone concealing a gun or bomb is only slightly better than chance, according to new research. Officers with more experience were even less accurate.

  • Far-right extremists far greater threat than left-wing militants: Experts

    Leaving aside the moral issues raised by President Donald Trump’s unsettling insistence on equating neo-Nazis and anti-Nazis, experts say that the president’s assertion, in his Tuesday’s press conference, that left-inspired violence in the United States is as bad as violence generated by the extreme right, is patently false. The FBI, DHS, and state and local law enforcement consider right-wing extremists to be an order of magnitude more dangerous to public safety in the United States than left-leaning extremists. Domestic security experts estimate that there are 400,000-500,000 Americans who are affiliated, in one way or another, with various right-wing extremist groups, compared with a few thousand Antifa, Black Box, and other militant left-wing activists.

  • The seeds of the alt-right, America’s emergent right-wing populist movement

    Over the past year, far-right activists – which some have labeled the “alt-right” – have gone from being an obscure, largely online subculture to a player at the very center of American politics. Long relegated to the cultural and political fringe, alt-right activists were among the most enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump. Former Breitbart.com executive Steve Bannon – who declared the website “the platform for the alt-right” – is the president’s chief political strategist. To its critics, the alt-right is just a code term for white nationalism, a much-maligned ideology associated with neo-Nazis and Klansmen. The movement, however, is more nuanced, encompassing a much broader spectrum of right-wing activists and intellectuals. Unlike old-school white nationalist movements, the alt-right has endeavored to create a self-sustaining counterculture, which includes a distinct vernacular, memes, symbols and a number of blogs and alternative media outlets. Now that it has been mobilized, the alt-right is gaining a firmer foothold in American politics.

  • Immigrant detention centers are referred to as “family centers” but resemble prisons

    Despite federal officials labeling centers where immigrant women and their families are held as family detention centers or release programs as “Alternative to Detention.” Researchers found the detention complexes function like jails and prisons and that ATD programs are essentially expanded surveillance schemes.