Guns

By Isaac Arnsdorf | – A membership roster for the Oath Keepers, a violent extremist group whose followers have been charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection, includes state lawmakers, congressional candidates, and local government and GOP officials. ( ProPublica) – North Carolina state representative Mike Clampitt swore an oath to uphold the Constitution after his […]

Crime

More guns, pandemic stress and a police legitimacy crisis created perfect conditions for homicide spike in 2020

The Conversation

By Justin Nix | – Homicides in the U.S. spiked by almost 30% in 2020. That was the main takeaway from figures released on Sept. 27, 2021, by the FBI that showed almost uniform increases across America in the murder rate. The fact that big cities, small cities, suburbs and rural areas – in both […]

Epidemics

America’s Lost Causes: Misty-eyed Nostalgia for Bounty Hunters, Slave-Holding and Wife-beating

H. Scott Prosterman

We have a conflagration of “Lost Causes” in America. Some people in the South still revere the Confederate leaders who betrayed the United States during the Civil War. Now much of the South is wrapped up in another “Lost Cause” a series of destructive myths – the fiction that the election was stolen from Donald […]

Guns

Are mass shootings an American epidemic?

The Conversation

By Lacey Wallace | – The U.S. has suffered yet another mass shooting, with a deadly attack in a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. This was the fifth mass shooting in five weeks, including a shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado that took the lives of 10 people on March 22 and just days earlier, […]

Featured

It doesn’t have to be this Way: England has 33 gun Homicides per Year (equiv. 182); US has 10,258

Juan Cole

Revised We are reeling from back-to-back mass shootings, in Atlanta and Boulder. The main similarities of the two are that the young alleged murderers easily bought firearms just before their horrific killings and that neither of them ought to have been anywhere near a firearm, clearly having severe emotional problems. The US policy of constantly […]

Donald Trump

America now has its own Green Zone, as Trumpian Fascism erects Racist Red Zone

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – America now has its own Green Zone in downtown Washington, D.C., where the Mall is closed, the city is locked down, and protective fencing has gone up around the Capitol. You only need a Green Zone, a safe small space completely under the control of the government, if the rest […]

Donald Trump

Americans are Dying to Die: Guard shot for asking Customers to wear Mask as Trump’s CDC predicts 3k death / day by June

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Security guard Calvin Munerlyn, father of six with three step-children, was shot to death Monday in an altercation over Munerlyn’s demand that a 20-year-old woman wear a mask to shop in a Dollar Store in Flint, Michigan. She was there with her mother, who was masked, and with two men. […]

Children

Epidemic: Firearms are the Second Leading Cause of Death for US Children and Teens

The Conversation

By Marc A Zimmerman, Patrick Carter and Rebecca Cunningham | – Injury is the leading cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents, accounting for over 60% of all deaths in this group. Many of these deaths occur during fun, everyday activities, like swimming in the backyard pool or during a family car ride. But […]

Featured

America’s Shame: 15,549 Gun Homicides in US in 2017; 32 (160) in UK

Juan Cole

Revised We are reeling from back-to-back mass shootings, at least one of them an explicit manifestation of white nationalist terrorism in which Americans of a specific ethnicity were targeted, Nazi-like. The US policy of constantly endangering our children is enacted by a bought-and-paid-for Congress on behalf of 10 major gun manufacturers with an $8 billion […]