Blog 3: So today I wanted to share some more background on our blogging team. As an applied social psychologist, I find this information very interesting indeed! What excites you about being part of the Injury Prevention social media editorial team? Sheree Bekker: The invaluable conversation that has sprung up around scholarly work through the […]
Category: Gun violence
Hope for future gun control
Last week was the anniversary of the horrific Newtown shootings. That was when I saw an item on Mother Jones that prompted this posting. That item described the work of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA). This group was founded after the Newtown massacre and it has had several important victories, largely […]
Gangs, Violence, and a Flood of Migrant Children
There has been a tremendous amount of media attention in the United States on what is described as a flood of migrant children illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. Statistics referenced in a recent NPR article estimate that more than 50,000 unaccompanied children have been detained by US border patrol in the last eight months. http://www.npr.org/2014/06/20/323657817/from-a-stream-to-a-flood-migrant-kids-overwhelm-u-s-border-agents […]
Guns on Campus in Idaho
Today, the Idaho House of Representatives will be discussing legislation that has already passed the state senate that would allow individuals who have a concealed weapon’s permit to carry a gun on college and university campuses in the state. One of the arguments in favor of this legislation is that someone who is considering carrying […]
Gun violence in movies
More on guns… There was a really interesting paper titled “Gun Violence Trends in Movies” recently published in Pediatrics. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/132/6/1014.full.pdf This study examined the presence of gun related violence in top grossing major motion pictures and concluded that gun violence in films has grown substantially. Not a huge surprise but what was interesting is that […]
When the Right to Bear Arms Includes the Mentally Ill
Also in the New York Times a short while ago was a piece describing what advocates of gun control have to contend with when even mental health checks are challenged. This is an edited version of that article: Last April, workers at Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut called the police to report that a psychiatric patient […]
A small step toward gun control
A New York Times alert just appeared stating that the New York Gun Law Is Largely Upheld by a Federal Judge A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that New York’s expanded ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines was constitutional, but struck down a provision forbidding gun owners from loading their firearms with more than […]
Guns or cars?
Mother Jones recently posted a fascinating but disturbing map of US states showing the number of deaths by cars vs deaths by guns. In light of the Newtown anniversary I wanted to share it with blog readers. The lead was the Bloomberg News study “ suggesting that by 2015, guns would kill more Americans than traffic accidents […]
Kids and Guns
A recent article in the New York Times captures several elusive aspects of gun violence prevention efforts and the “gun culture” that exists in some places in the United States. The article, Titled “Children and Guns: the Hidden Toll” focuses on the most tragic of unintentional gun related fatalities; those that involve children shooting themselves […]
Urgent request from California re firearm legislation
Garen Wintemute, former member of our Editorial Board and Director of the Violence Prevention Research at UC Davis, sent this urgent request regarding pending legislation in California: I write with good news and a request. The California legislature has just passed a large number of firearm policy measures and sent them to Governor Brown for consideration. […]