#gun.violence

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One way to decrease the risk of terrorism is clear: Keep military-grade weaponry out of the hands of mentally unstable people, those with a history of violence, and those on F.B.I. watch lists. But, despite sit-ins and filibusters, our lawmakers are failing us on this front and choose instead to side with the National Rifle Association. Suspected terrorists can buy assault rifles, but we’re still carrying tiny bottles of shampoo to the airport. If we’re going to use the “they’ll just find another way” argument, let’s use that to let us keep our shoes on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/aziz-ansari-why-trump-makes-me-scared-for-my-family.html?_r=1

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We hear about the deaths, the unfortunate myriad corpses. We hear about crime-ridden neighborhoods, about war veteran suicides. They are tragic and they are too many. But also this: Bullets don’t have to rip through our bodies to leave shrapnel in our hearts.

http://narrative.ly/the-day-i-told-my-father-to-shoot-himself/

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Finally, Granovetter’s model suggests that riots are sometimes more than spontaneous outbursts. If they evolve, it means they have depth and length and a history. Granovetter thought that the threshold hypothesis could be used to describe everything from elections to strikes, and even matters as prosaic as how people decide it’s time to leave a party. He was writing in 1978, long before teen-age boys made a habit of wandering through their high schools with assault rifles. But what if the way to explain the school-shooting epidemic is to go back and use the Granovetterian model—to think of it as a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant’s action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before?

http://ift.tt/1jpPPm8

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Last week, the FBI released “Crime in the U.S., 2014,” a report that includes (among other stats) all incidents of gun violence known to law enforcement (except in Florida and Alabama, states that chose not to share that particular information). On “Expanded Homicide Data Table 11, Murder Circumstances by Weapon Type” (downloadable here), we see that the most common known circumstance for gun homicide is “arguments.” The number of people shot to death last year in arguments not during the commission of a felony (1,759) dwarfs the number shot to death in gang violence (667) and the number shot to death in drug trafficking (298)—combined. These are arguments over things like radio-controlled-car races, candy, inheritance of a tractor and road rage. What do you suppose will happen when we add to that milieu armed confrontations over grades, hazing and college breakups?

http://ift.tt/1jLeX7n

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Woolrich was stunned by how fast her story spread. Within a few days, a 10News article from San Diego hit the #1 spot on Reddit’s hot news section, and #10 on the overall site. The Fox News homepage piece reached 6,988 Facebook shares and 5,174 comments. But the articles were taking a political spin, turning her story into a pro-gun parable and blaming Dartmouth, not Bennett, for her problems. “I was vulnerable,” she says, thinking back to that summer with regret. “I wasn’t thinking through the implications of what it meant for them and how I should be careful because they could really profit off of my uncomfortable situation.”

http://ift.tt/1JXcgtt

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We need gun laws that give society legal recourse by making each gun owner/user personally accountable for their own actions. Those laws should be designed to change our gun culture over time in order to make gun violence less likely. And, of course, those laws should not keep those of us who take responsibility for our own actions from exercising our Second Amendment rights. Now, what exactly does such a law look like? Well, it looks like the NRA.

http://ift.tt/1IhfgzN

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Via This American Life, an audio series examining life at Harper High, Chicago, where guns are the norm and 29 kids have lost their lives to gun violence in course of a single year.

Here is part two

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In September 2012, a spree of deadly gun violence that began with an argument over some costume jewelry and resulted in the death of five and injuries to eight others finally culminated in life sentences for three of the five accused, while the two others received 54 years and 30 years respectively.

Central to the trial -- and the verdict -- was the testimony of Nathaniel Simms, accomplice-turned-witness for the prosecution. The question of why he turned snitch propels this superbly narrated true crime story.