If We Can’t Change American Gun Laws, We Should Change American Gun Culture

Focusing on Violence Prevention Might Slow Gun Rights Activists’ Arms Race

The prospects for gun control laws have never been bleaker. As states and courts fall all over themselves to make guns more available, the civilian arsenal has ballooned to 400 million guns.

Twenty-eight states now have stand-your-ground laws, which allow you to shoot perceived threats out in public, on the street. Twenty-seven states have permitless carry laws, which, as the name suggests, allows you to carry a gun with no permit, and no safety training.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has chosen to elevate expansive gun rights. In New York State Rifle and …

What Do Mining Claims and National Parks Have in Common? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

What Do Mining Claims and National Parks Have in Common?

America Enacted Two Environmental Laws 10 Weeks Apart in 1872. One Encouraged Drilling Into Public Lands—The Other Tried to Conserve Them

If you know where to go in Death Valley National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias Park and Preserve, Glacier Peak Wilderness, or Bears Ears National Monument, you might come across the remnants …

The ‘Ferociously Contested’ Story of How Blackness Became a Legal Identity | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The ‘Ferociously Contested’ Story of How Blackness Became a Legal Identity

In Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana, Colonial Laws Defining ‘Freedom’ Still Affected the Status of Citizens Centuries Later

How did Africans become “blacks” in the Americas?

Those who were forced into the ships of the infamous slave trade probably thought of themselves using ethnic and territorial terms that …

The Carpinteriazation of Banned Bags

California Is Voting on Whether to Catch up With a Beach City Transformed by a Ban on Single-Use Bags

Next month, California might almost catch up with Carpinteria.

The small beach town in Santa Barbara County, population 13,500, is rarely cited as a leader in anything. But when it comes …

Why Is It So Hard to Stop Rave Overdoses?

Heavy-Handed Calls to Ban the Music Events Have Done Little to Curb Their Drug-Related Deaths

When the music comes on at a rave, a synergetic feeling of mass escape and euphoria runs through the crowd. But this unparalleled collective high has come at a cost. …

Did Protestant Christianity Create the Dismal American Prison System?

Puritans’ Focus On “Right Living” Helped Justify Our Harsh Treatment of Prisoners

While in Ireland teaching a criminal justice course this past semester, I had the opportunity to take a tour of an Irish prison.

The Irish prison service states one of …