Guest Thinkers — February 21, 2011

Is Gun Control Feasible?

Unfortunately, there is no feasible way, certainly not in the United States, to go from the present world to a world without guns, says Nobel Laureate Gary Becker.

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It is estimated that some 60 million Americans own about 200 million guns. This implies more than one gun per American household. Naturally, such an average conceals enormous variation across households and communities. Gun ownership is uncommon in suburbs like Scarsdale and Winnetka, while most households have guns in the inner cities of major cities, like Chicago, Detroit, or Los Angeles. It is not simply the immense number of guns that makes gun control so difficult, but also the fact that the great majority is illegal and not officially registered.

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Health

Gun Violence Spreads Like Infectious Disease, says Yale Professor

A new Yale-Harvard study categorizes gun violence as a social contagion and a public health epidemic. If nothing changes, over 33,000 people will die at the end of a gun this year in the United States.

Politics & Current Affairs

Setting Our Sights on New Approaches: A Lesson on Gun Control from Germany and Japan

Germany and Japan have far fewer incidences of gun-related violence than the United States. What can we learn from how they regulate firearms to decrease the number of American tragedies?

Guest Thinkers

AU Students Debate the Internet’s Impact on Society, Part A

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

Culture & Religion

Reflexive urbanism

This essay describes a model for urban development that takes into account and makes use of the externalities that exist in the built environment. Buildings and the people that inhabitat them makes neighborhoods and vice versa the value of a building is in its locations. How can better frame this relationship between an object and its environment? How can develop strategies for a integral area development that learn from the best global examples?

Collage of geopolitical symbols, featuring a close-up of a man's bald head, China's flag, a globe highlighting Taiwan, and circuit patterns.

The Present

Why the USSR and China fell behind the US in the Chip Cold War

Both nations made missteps, but China still has a chance to make up lost ground.

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