Adding additional police is a typical reaction to outbursts of violence, but that’s not enough, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “City officials have to do something,” Butts said. “They don’t know where to turn. They don’t have the luxury of making long-term investments to build strong communities, so they turn to the quick solution. … If you never make those long-term investments, then you live in a constant state of emergency.” Continue reading Delaware News Journal—Search for Solutions to Violence is Ongoing

It’s a sentiment Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says makes good sense. We’ve known for years, he says, that the biggest risk factor for being a victim of a gun injury is having a gun in the home. “Gun ownership is still primarily a risk to the gun owner,” Butts says, and that’s been a part of the debate that has gotten little attention. He thinks the media is starting to more frequently highlight instances of neglect by gun owners — like the case of a Washington woman accidentally shot and killed by a toddler who got hold of a pistol in the woman’s purse — though not as much as it could be. “Those stories used to be ignored by the press because they seem to be aberrant,” Butts says, but data like that compiled by VPC shows they’re far from it. Continue reading Village Voice—New York Has Third Lowest Gun Death Rate in Nation