While mass shootings have occurred much less frequently this year, the number of other non-suicidal gun deaths is expected to be greater than last year. Increased stress, divisions over racial justice and policing, and political tensions are a few of the factors impacting the number of violent shootings. The Violence Project's James Densley … [Read more...]
Recent Shootings Spark Fears of a More Violent Summer
Why Nonprofits Can’t Research Gun Violence As Well As The Feds
Federal funding for gun-related research through the CDC and National Institutes of Health is limited by the Dickey Amendment, which bans the use of federal money to "advocate or promote gun control." However, this amendment doesn't restrict all federal funding. The Violence Project's co-founder James Densley commented on the impact of a grant from … [Read more...]
‘Modern gun’ or weapon of war? Carnage heightens scrutiny of popular, widely available assault rifles
Thousands of semiautomatic, military-style rifles filter out of Garrett Streitz’s gun manufacturing business every year, and there’s no shortage of people who want to buy one. “It’s just the modern gun,” said Streitz, who owns Alex Pro Firearms in Alexandria, Minn. To others, they are weapons of war whose lethality was again put on grim … [Read more...]
Trying to understand and prevent mass shootings
Whenever there’s a mass shooting, like the three last week, we ask ourselves two questions: Why? And, how can we keep it from happening again? The Violence Project, a nonpartisan think tank, strives to answer those questions. Under a grant from the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Violence … [Read more...]
A Common Trait Among Mass Killers: Hatred Toward Women
“They’re angry and they’re suicidal and they’ve had traumatic childhoods and these hard lives, and they get to a point and they find something or someone to blame,” said Jillian Peterson, a psychologist and a founder of the Violence Project, a research organization that studies mass shootings. “For some people, that is women, and we are seeing that … [Read more...]