Gun violence

Shooting with impunity

By CommonWealth Staff Boston police, Gun violence 1 Comment Feb 16, 2017

Boston has become one of the safer big cities in the United States. In 2015, the city’s murder rate reached a 10-year low, with just 39 people killed. That number climbed to 47 homicides last year, but still remained far below the murderous days of the crack epidemic of the early 1990s, when the city(...)

The Download

Guns, gangs, and toddlers

By CommonWealth Staff Gun violence, Urban Affairs 0 Comments Oct 17, 2016

There is often very little daylight between victims and victimizers in the mayhem caused by gang-fueled gun violence. Sometimes that is the case figuratively, with today’s target of a gang shooting becoming tomorrow’s gun-wielding retaliatory marksman. But it can also be true in a literal sense, as Saturday’s shooting of a Roxbury 2-year-old lays bare.(...)

Criminal Justice/ Guns/ Fall 2016

Crime and punishment

What’s the right thing to do with an 18-year-old caught with a gun?

By Michael Jonas Courts, Crime and Punishment, Gun control, Gun violence, Massachusetts Legislature 5 Comments Oct 10, 2016

Photographs by Mark Ostow DIANE MCMANUS SAYS her youngest child, Timothy, is “no street kid.” He was “raised in the church,” she says, a respectful son who minded the rules she set down, even as a teenager growing up in a rough patch of Dorchester off Blue Hill Avenue. But while Diane McManus was out(...)

Gun ownership/ Guns/ Politics

Healey clamps down on assault weapon sales

AG says manufacturers and dealers knowingly sell illegal guns in Mass.

By Jack Sullivan Assault Weapons, Attorney General Maura Healey, Gun control, Gun ownership, Gun violence, Massachusetts politics, National Politics, Second amendment 2 Comments Jul 20, 2016

ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY has drawn a line in the sand: Beginning immediately, Massachusetts gun dealers are on notice that selling a semi-automatic rifle that doesn’t comply with the state’s ban on assault weapons will result in criminal and civil penalties. Healey made the declaration in a press conference this morning — and in an(...)

The Download/ Media

Making noise — and a splash — on guns

By CommonWealth Staff Gun violence, Media and Journalism, The Boston Globe 0 Comments Jun 16, 2016

For a newspaper opinion page, it’s the closest thing there is to shouting something from the rooftops. Today’s Boston Globe — both online and in print — leads with a large-type three-word call: “MAKE IT STOP.” The “it” is the carnage of mass shootings in this country, as the paper calls for a national ban(...)

The Download/ Uncategorized

The trauma of everyday terror

By CommonWealth Staff Current Affairs, Gun violence 0 Comments Dec 7, 2015

It’s the sheer randomness of the violence that sends such shivers. One minute people are blithely going about their business without a care; the next they are in the grip of utter terror, wondering as bullets fly if these are their final moments. That undoubtedly captures the feelings of those trapped at a San Bernardino(...)

The Download/ Media

Broadcast murder

By CommonWealth Staff Gun violence, Media and Journalism 0 Comments Aug 27, 2015

Yesterday’s live broadcast of the execution of two unsuspecting Virginia television journalists was shocking, but in many ways simply represented the elevation to a new level of the digital era and violence. “The shooting and the horrifying images it produced marked a new chapter in the intersection of video, violence, and social media,” said the(...)


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Gun violence

What’s the right thing to do with an 18-year-old caught with a gun?

AG says manufacturers and dealers knowingly sell illegal guns in Mass.

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