By Ashley D. Cannon,  Kate Reese,  Paige Tetens  &  Kathryn R. Fingar 

Between 2015 and 2021, 3,498 Americans died from unintentional gun injuries, including 713 children 17 years and younger. Roughly 30 million American children live in homes with firearms, many of which are loaded and unlocked. This study assesses the scope of unintentional shootings by children 17 and younger in the US and the relationship between these shootings and state-level secure storage laws.

United States, Injury Epidemiology. 2022, 13pg

By David M Hureau

Guns are central to the comprehension of the racial inequalities in neighborhood violence. This may sound simple when presented so plainly. However, its significance derives from the limited consideration that the neighborhood research paradigm has given guns: they are typically conceived of as a background condition of disadvantaged neighborhoods where violence is concentrated. Instead, I argue that guns belong at the forefront of neighborhood analyses of violence. Employing the logic and language of the ecological approach, I maintain that guns must be considered as mechanisms of neighborhood violence, with the unequal distribution of guns serving as a critical link between neighborhood structural conditions and rates of violence. Furthermore, I make the case that American gun policy should be understood as a set of macrostructural forces that represent a historic and persistent source of disadvantage in poor Black neighborhoods.

United States, American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2022 18pg

By David M. Hureau

The ecological approach to the study of crime and violence represents one of the most distinctive, enduring, and empirically supported paradigms of criminological research. At its heart, this approach promotes understanding of the unequal distribution of violence across neighborhoods as a function not of essentialist qualities of the people that occupy particular places, but rather of spatially patterned inequalities that influence community capacity to control violence. Drawing inspiration from the theoretic development of Sampson and Wilson’s classic article, “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality'' (1995), over the last two decades, researchers working in the ecological tradition have wrestled with two key problems in the study of neighborhood violence. First, what  are the links that connect the structural features of neighborhoods—like poverty and racial composition—to violence? These links have come to be referred to as the mechanisms of neighborhood violence. And second, how do factors originating outside of the confines of neighborhoods—such as large economic shifts and discriminatory housing policies—concentrate within specific neighborhoods in ways that influence disadvantage and violence? These factors have typically been called macrostructural forces.   In this paper, I argue that guns are central to the comprehension of the racial inequalities in neighborhood violence. Such an argument may sound simple when presented so plainly. However, its significance derives from the limited consideration that the neighborhood research paradigm has given guns, typically conceiving of them as a background condition of disadvantaged neighborhoods where violence is concentrated. Instead, I argue that guns belong at the forefront of neighborhood analyses of violence. Employing the logic and language of the ecological approach, I maintain that guns must be considered as mechanisms of neighborhood violence, with the unequal distribution of guns serving as a critical link between neighborhood structural conditions and rates of violence.  Furthermore, I make the case that American gun policy should be understood as a set of  macrostructural forces that represent an historic and persistent source of disadvantage in poor black neighborhoods.

United States, SquareOneJustice,  Roundtable on the Future of Justice Policy. 2019 16pg

Edited by Jennifer Erin Salahub, Markus Gottsbacher and John de Boer

While cities often act as the engines of economic growth for developing countries, they are also frequently the site of growing violence, poverty, and inequality. Yet, social theory, largely developed and tested in the Global North, is often inadequate in tackling the realities of life in the dangerous parts of cities in the Global South. Drawing on the findings of an ambitious five- year, 15- project research programme, Social Theories of Urban Violence in the Global South offers a uniquely Southern perspective on the violence– poverty– inequalities dynamics in cities of the Global South. Through their research, urban violence experts based in low-and middle income countries demonstrate how “urban violence” means different things to different people in different places. While some researchers adopt or adapt existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks, others develop and test new theories, each interpreting and operationalizing the concept of urban violence in the particular context in which they work. In particular, the book highlights the links between urban violence, poverty, and inequalities based on income, class, gender, and other social cleavages. Providing important new perspectives from the Global South, this book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, and students with an interest in violence and exclusion in the cities of developing countries.

Abingdon, Oxon , UK; New York: Routledge, 2018. 244p.