By Scott R. Kegler, et al.

Introduction: The majority of homicides (79%) and suicides (53%) in the United States involved a firearm in 2020. High firearm homicide and suicide rates and corresponding inequities by race and ethnicity and poverty level represent important public health concerns. This study examined changes in firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates coinciding with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Conclusions and Implications for Public Health Practice: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the firearm homicide rate in the United States reached its highest level since 1994, with substantial increases among several population subgroups. These increases have widened disparities in rates by race and ethnicity and poverty level. Several increases in firearm suicide rates were also observed. Implementation of comprehensive strategies employing proven approaches that address underlying economic, physical, and social conditions contributing to the risks for violence and suicide is urgently needed to reduce these rates and disparities

MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2022 May 13;71(19):656-663

By The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)

Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves. n The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has compiled a list of 150 rightwing terrorist acts, attempted acts, and plots and conspiracies that took place in the United States during the past 25 years (1993-2017). These incidents were perpetrated by white supremacists, anti-government extremists, anti-abortion extremists and other types of right-wing extremists.

New York: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 2017. 28p.

By Erin Dauphinais-Soos

Every year people with ties to a variety of extreme movements and causes kill people in the United States; the ADL Center on Extremism tracks these murders. Extremists regularly commit murders in the service of their ideology, in the service of a group or gang they may belong to, or while engaging in traditional, non-ideological criminal activities.

In 2021, domestic extremists killed at least 29 people in the United States, in 19 separate incidents. This represents a modest increase from the 23 extremist-related murders documented in 2020 but is far lower than the number of murders committed in any of the five years prior (which ranged from 45 to 78).

The report provides additional insight on perpetrator affiliations, police officer killings, information on the perpetrators and incidents from 2021, an analysis of white supremacist killings in the United States from 2012-2021, and information on the PROTECT plan, ADL’s “seven-part plan to mitigate the threat posed by domestic extremism and domestic terrorism while protecting civil rights and civil liberties.”

By Ulrich Garms, Lara Wilkinson, and Amrita Kapur

Women and men, girls and boys are among the victims of acts of terrorism, such as hostage-taking, explosives attacks in public places, or aeroplane hijacking. Terrorist groups, however, also specifically target women through acts of sexual and gender-based violence – such as rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage – as a means of achieving tactical, strategic and ideological aims. Many terrorist groups encroach on women’s human rights and impede their socioeconomic development, including by restricting their movement. In some contexts, women disproportionately experience internal displacement as a result of terrorist threats, and lose access to livelihoods owing to terrorist attacks. Women may also face gender-specific difficulties when attempting to access justice and seeking remedies as victims of terrorism.

Vienna: UNODC, 2019. 214p.

By Naureen Chowdhury Fink, Rafia Barakat and Liat Shetret

The roles of women as they relate to terrorism and counterterrorism issues have remained underexplored by policymakers and international counterterrorism actors. As the international community shifts from a reactive to a more preventive approach regarding terrorism and violent extremism, the need for a more comprehensive multi-stakeholder approach to addressing these challenges has become apparent. Yet, little attention has been paid to integrating a gender dimension into UN and many national efforts to address the problems of terrorism and violent extremism. This policy brief explores the conceptual and operational challenges in integrating a gender dimension into counterterrorism policy and programming and offers a set of recommendations for the United Nations and other actors to consider when developing effective and sustainable counterterrorism efforts.

Goshen, IN: Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, 2013. 18p.

By Seran De Leede, Renate Haupfleish,, Katja Korolkova, and Monika Natter

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, focuses on Islamist radicalisation and violent extremism in the EU and has two aims: 1) to explore and assess the question of women’s radicalisation and their involvement in violent extremism in the EU as well as to look into the mechanisms in place to prevent women and girls from radicalisation and propose further actions; and 2) to identify the potential of women in preventing radicalisation, in particular by looking into women’s current role in counter-radicalisation strategies and to explore potential gendered approaches and best practices to counter-radicalisatio

Brussels: European Parliament, Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs, 2017. 100p.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

This handbook reflects the OSCE’s commitment to supporting a gender-aware approach for the security sector in preventing and countering VERLT. The OSCE participating States have recognized the significance of gender in several commitments, including the OSCE Ministerial Council Declaration No. 4/15 on preventing and countering VERLT, which was adopted in Belgrade in December 2015. The OSCE also supports the UN Security Council Resolution 2242 (2015), which calls for the greater integration by States of their agendas on women, peace and security, including on counter-terrorism and P/CVERLT.

Vienna: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2019. 142p.

By Catrina Doxsee, Seth G. Jones, Jared Thompson, Grace Hwang, and Kateryna Halstead

There has been a significant rise in the number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots at demonstrations in the United States, according to new CSIS data. The result is escalating violence in U.S. cities between extremists from opposing sides, a major break from historical trends. In 2021, over half of all domestic terrorist incidents occurred in the context of metropolitan demonstrations. In addition, the most frequent targets of attacks were government, military, and law enforcement agencies, who are increasingly at the center of domestic terrorism by extremists of all ideologies.

Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2022. 15p.

By Chelsea Daymon and Devorah Margolin

This report compares women’s participation in far-right and salafi-jihadist movements in the United States through the examination of four case studies: the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State. To do so, the authors apply a unique analytical framework that examines three key aspects of women’s participation to compare similarities and differences. First, the report takes a top-down approach to analyze how organizations conceptualize women’s roles. Second, it takes a bottom-up approach to explore how women have participated in violent extremism in the United States. Finally, it uses a gendered lens to address how groups have responded when women have participated in violent extremism in America.

Washington, DC: Program on Extremism at George Washington University., 2022. 67p.

By Editor James J.F. Forest and Bart Schuurman

The first article by Deven Parekh, Amarnath Amarasingam, Lorne Dawson and Derek Ruths offers a detailed critique of Twitter data collection methods and propose suggestions for improving the collection of data in future research on terrorists use of social media. Then Ariel Koch examines the impact of Islamic State beheading videos among jihadists and other extremists. Next, Adesoji Adelaja, Abdullahi Labo and Eva Penar examine how the Nigerian public’s views about the root causes and objectives of Boko Haram differ from those of the government. And in our final article of this issue a team of researchers at the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE’s) report on their recent Facebook ad-campaign aimed at raising awareness about the realities of living under ISIS and protecting vulnerable potential recruits from considering joining.

Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) of Leiden University, Campus The Hague. Vol.XII, Issue 3, June 2018. 189p.

By Nils Duquet and Dennis Vanden Auweele

Executive summary. The main findings of Project TARGET were that gun trafficking is a multifaceted phenomenon that predominantly impacts criminal and terrorist gun violence (rather than domestic violence or other sorts of disputes). Armed robbers and lower-level criminals generally acquire firearms to threaten or for the status they afford, and they are increasingly doing so through purchasing (converted) non-live-firing firearms. The predominant type today has become Turkish blank-firing weapons purchased in countries with lenient legislation regarding these weapons. There is also an influx of easy-to-convert Flobert guns being trafficked in(to) Europe and converted in transit or at their place of destination. Higher-level criminals have more access to firearms, including sometimes also military grade firearms, through the smuggling of conflict legacy weapons or the trafficking of reactivated firearms. While jihadi terrorists tend to acquire their firearms predominantly through criminal connections, rightwing terrorists more often tend to rely on legal purchases, firearm assembling and internet purchases. We noted that a proliferation of gun availability can lead to an arms race among criminals, increased rates of gun violence and general sentiments of insecurity among the population.

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2021. 212p.

By Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California Davis

This series of slides presents an overview of firearm-related deaths in the U.S.

Davis, CA: Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California Davis, 2021. 14p.

By European Commission, Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry

This report presents the results of the evaluation study commissioned by Directorate General Enterprise and Industry with the aim of assessing the implementation of the Firearms Directive in all MS. The evaluation aims at providing the necessary input for the report that the European Commission shall, by the end of July 2015, “submit […] to the European Parliament and the Council on the situation resulting from the application of this Directive, accompanied, if appropriate, by amending proposals”. This evaluation is also included in the Commission's Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme (REFIT), which aims at reviewing the entire stock of EU legislation to identify burdens, inconsistencies, gaps, overlaps and obsolete measures and to make, where necessary, proposals to follow-up on the findings of the review (COM(2013)685 and Annex). The evaluation study addresses five evaluation criteria identified in the Terms of Reference (ToR) that are: 1. Consistency of the implementation of the Directive’s provisions, of the interpretation of the key terms and an overall coherence of the Directive with other pieces of legislation dealing with weapons; 2. Relevance of such provisions with respect to the existing needs in the area of internal market functioning and EU citizens’ security; 3. Effectiveness in terms of the extent to which provisions have contributed to the achievement of set targets, i.e. their actual impacts; 4. Efficiency of procedures and obligations introduced by the Directive, namely if results have been achieved at reasonable costs; 5. Added value of EU intervention as opposed to national legislation and actions.

Brussels: Publications Office, 2014. 106p.

By Nils Duquet and Maarten Van Alstein

The Small Arms Survey … estimated civilian firearms ownership in Belgium as between 1.500.000 and 2.100.000 arms (of which 870.000 were said to be registered), an average of 17,2 firearms per 100 people. These estimates were based on a press communiqué of the Council of Ministers of Belgium (December 2005) and on articles in the Belgian press.1 Similar numbers also figured in the explanatory notes attached to the draft of a new Weapons Act which was tabled in the Belgian Federal Parliament in February 2006,2 and in a note published by the Groupe de Recherche et d’Information sur la Paix et la Sécurité (GRIP) in Brussels in June 2006, in the wake of the introduction of the new Belgian Weapons Act.3 However, although the estimate of 1.500.000 to 2.000.000 weapons became commonly used and widely quoted4 , it is not without its problems. Not least, the source and the method applied to arrive at this estimate remain unclear. Moreover, policy makers, stakeholders and the media do not consistently use this figure of 1.5 to 2 million guns. In some cases the figure is used to indicate the total number of guns (both legal and illegal), while in others it is quoted to refer to the number of illegal guns in circulation. Of course, because of their illegal nature, estimating the number of illegally held guns will always be a complicated exercise. In the course of a major research project undertaken by the Flemish Peace Institute on the trade, possession and use of firearms in Belgium, we were not able to find a satisfactory method, based on the available evidence, to calculate an estimate of the total number of privately owned guns in Belgium (legally plus illegally held firearms, the latter including firearms owned by criminals and guns irregularly held by citizens). The statistical information on which to base an adequate estimate is simply not available. For the moment, the reality is that nobody knows how many firearms are privately owned in Belgium.

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2019. 23p.

By Nils Duquet

Every year in Europe around 1,150 people are shot dead with firearms. These deaths occur in various contexts, including the relational and criminal spheres. The little available research into the weapons used during these fatal crimes suggests that different types of firearms are used in different contexts.1 In this report we focus on the weapons that were used for one specific form of deadly firearms incidents, namely “public mass shootings”. These are shooting incidents in the (semi-)public space in which the perpetrator(s) use one or more firearms and during which several people are killed and injured. Under this umbrella term we find numerous types of shooting incidents, ranging from school shootings in which a frustrated pupil murders a number of classmates and/or teachers to terrorist attacks in which groups of perpetrators attempt to spread terror in coordinated attacks. A look at recent mass shootings shows that significant differences can be observed in terms of, for example, the locations where these shootings were carried out, the number of perpetrators, the motives of the perpetrator(s), the selection of the victims and the firearms used. This report analyses one specific aspect of such shooting incidents, namely the firearms that were used.

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2016. 45p.

By Flemish Peace Institute

In recent years, policy attention to firearm violence in the European Union (EU) has increased greatly. A thorough insight into the problem is an important step in developing such a policy. How many firearms are circulating in the EU? How many deaths are caused by firearms? Is there a relationship between gun ownership and the number of violent deaths (homicides and suicides)? And what is the impact of firearms legislation? The European Commission has already said that ‘a lack of solid EU-wide statistics and intelligence hampers effective policy and operational responses’. The research of the Flemish Peace Institute offers a starting point to fill this need.

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2019. 2p.

By Nils Duquet

In Europe, there were 23 public mass shootings between 2009 and 2018. They claimed the lives of a total of 341 people. That means an average of 2.3 mass shootings with a total of 34 casualties per year. Those shootings took place in 15 different European countries, including Belgium, with mass shootings at the Christmas market in Liège in December 2011 and the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014. In its report “Armed to Kill”I , the Flemish Peace Institute investigated which types of firearms were used in the 23 identified mass shootings in Europe and how the perpetrators obtained those firearms

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2019. 7p.

By Matteo Dressler, Nils Duquet and Julia Eckelmann

Project DIVERT is an international research project to contribute to the fight against illegal firearms markets in Europe. To this end, the project has investigated various methods by which legal firearms are diverted and become illegal. Because most illicitly held firearms in the European Union have a legal history, generating a better intelligence picture on firearms diversion is critical. It can help better understand the original transition of weapons into the illegal cycle and develop effective tools to stop such spillovers. This report examines firearms diversion through non-regularisation. It is part of a three-part series exploring previously under-researched firearms diversion methods in the EU. Two additional studies deal with firearms diversion through theft and fraud. We define non-regularisation as: The act of not regularising the legal status of firearms, ammunition or firearm components, for example, by not asking for the necessary authorisation or registering them, after a change in legislation or another major event (e.g. armed conflict).

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2021. 120p.

By Quitterie de Labbey, Nils Duquet and Lore Smets

Project DIVERT is an international research project to contribute to the fight against illegal firearms markets in Europe. To this end, the project has investigated various methods by which legal firearms are diverted and become illegal. Because most illicitly held firearms in the European Union have a legal history, generating a better intelligence picture on firearms diversion is critical. It can help better understand the original transition of weapons into the illegal cycle and develop effective tools to stop such spillovers. This report examines firearms diversion through theft. It is part of a three-part series exploring previously under-researched diversion methods in the EU. Two additional studies deal with firearms diversion through fraud and non-regularization. We define the theft of firearms or ammunition as the deliberate act to take and remove firearms and/or ammunition of personal property with intent to deprive the legal owner from it.

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2021. 132p.

By Quitterie de Labbey, Nils Duquet and Diederik Cop.

Project DIVERT has analysed various methods by which legal firearms are diverted from their legal status and become illegal. Because most firearms held illicitly in the European Union (EU) were produced legally, generating a better intelligence picture of firearm diversion is critical for the development of effective measures and tools to prevent diversion. Project DIVERT focused on three previously under-researched types of diversion in the EU: (1) the theft of firearms, ammunition and components, (2) firearms fraud, and (3) the non-regularization of firearms. The Flemish Peace Institute coordinated Project DIVERT and implemented it in partnership with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). In addition, researchers from Arquebus Solutions contributed extensively to the first two research phases. Operational partners in this project were the Intelligence Centre Against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO) of the Spanish Ministry of Interior Affairs, the Central Directorate for the Combat of Organised Crime (DJSOC) of the Belgian Federal Police and the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol). Project DIVERT was co-funded by the Internal Security Fund – Police of DG Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission. In the first phase of the project, we conducted desk research which resulted in 28 country mappings that explored the scope, characteristics and dynamics of firearm diversion in all the EU Member States. In the second phase of the project, we deepened our understanding of fraud and analysed the policy initiatives geared toward preventing it through in-depth analyses of eight EU Member States. This report examines firearm diversion through fraud, which is defined as ‘the unlawful acquisition or possession of or trade in firearms or ammunition by tricking others and by intentionally concealing, omitting or perverting the truth’. Two complementary reports focus on firearm diversion through non-regularisation and theft. .

Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2022. 128p.