Sharing some good news 🎉 This month Im starting a 3yr Research Fellowship at @jhucarey.bsky.social's Tech & Society Initiative. Ill be based in downtown DC so if youre ever in the city, say hello! Oh and my wife @mkang.bsky.social is also here–– new AP at the JHU's new School of Govt & Policy! 🤩

A strategy targeting those driving gun violence in Baltimore's hardest-hit district cut shootings and homicides by a third in 18 months, with no rise in overall arrests, from Kapustin, Chalfin, Biddle, Wade, Khade, Layana, Struhl, and Braga www.nber.org/papers/w35292

Finished my PhD & feeling infinitely grateful. @bstewart.bsky.social told me in my 1st year that the PhD is "a lesson in self-mastery." That it was. What a privilege to have 6 years to discipline my thinking while researching violence in America alongside some of the most brilliant & generous ppl.

Commentary: Chicago recorded its fewest violent crimes in 60 years last year. That’s the good news. The bad news is what’s happening so far this year. While other cities continue reducing crime, in Chicago, homicides are actually up 7%. And summer is here, a time when violence spikes.

Being a victim of violence rewires how you see and engage with the world. I wrote a piece in the @chicagotribune.com on how that cycle forms and how cognitive behavioral interventions help break it. Read here: shorturl.at/M4uPo

Rio’s Rocinha community challenges the assumption that places lacking strong state presence are ungoverned. Informal social control through community networks, norms, and non-state authorities helps organize daily life for tens of thousands of residents.

Important & urgent: "concerns about reproducibility should not trump concerns about confidentiality or harm...particularly when efforts to ensure reproducibility have the potential to place inequitable burdens on qualitative researchers and to further erode...willingness to participate in research"

@jessicacalarco.com hit the nail on the head in her @pnas.org editorial about why the trend towards data transparency can be complicated for qualitative research--a dilemma that came to head in our recent PNAS paper on violence. I recommend giving it a read. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

1/3 Excited to share a paper 5 years in the making, now out in @pnas.org. We asked how does past exposure to violence shape the way people think in social situations, and how does that thinking drive future involvement in violence? w/ @sendhil.bsky.social

It’s been an incredible ride @princeton.edu @patricksharkey.bsky.social

Deep breath. I'm honored and excited to join the faculty of America's oldest research university, Johns Hopkins. I'll start this summer as a full professor, one of the founding faculty at the brand-new School of Government and Policy. We're building something unique & important, even historic.

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it. Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

Excited to share that I'll be joining Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy as an Assistant Professor this summer! Looking forward to moving to DC and the work ahead. Thankful to my amazing partner, friends, family, and mentors who have helped me get here.

Update your syllabus and stay on the frontier - it will increase your students’ wages. Epic work by my colleagues @barbarabiasi.com and @profsongma.bsky.social #linkoftheday www.barbarabiasi.com/uploads/1/0/...

Fantastic! Theory in violence interventions is often weak and simplistic. Qualitative work with programme participants is the way to improve.

How does a violence intervention program actually work? We interviewed 99 READI participants to find out. Key finding: They came for the job, stayed for the therapy. crimelab.uchicago.edu/resources/wh...

“True scholars often work in loneliness, compelled to find reward in the awareness that they have made valuable, even beautiful, contributions to the cumulative structure of human knowledge, whether anyone knows it at the time or not.” — George F. Kennan

"It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it. If any schools capitulate, the pressure will be enormous on all to fold. The only solution is solidarity & collective action against this effort at federal control over higher ed."

As Chicago’s gangs have weakened, it’s become easier for members to leave their groups but harder to avoid violence. My research in Criminology reveals why. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Check out our latest @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social piece on the role of states in regulating the proliferation of guns throughout the U.S. www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/sta...

When it comes to dealing with illegal guns in the US, the Pareto Principle reminds us that the vast majority are supplied by a small number of bad dealers. So what can we do? Find out in my new @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social piece, out today in a brand new issue. www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/the...

Latest issue of @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social is on gun supply, lots of interesting contributions, here is mine (with Dan O'Flaherty) www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/whe...

Excited to see my essay "Gun Culture Then & Now" appear today in a special issue of @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social. Thanks to @mkang.bsky.social for making this issue happen. Please read and share - the whole issue is packed with wonderful essays about the past, present, and future of guns in America.

Check out the @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social issue on gun supply! This volume is a tour de force on how the U.S. got to have so many guns and what can be done about it. Thanks to @everytown.bsky.social for their support. www.vitalcitynyc.org/issues/issue...

Guns don’t just enable violence; they produce the “shooter” as a durable social identity. Our hidden gem of the week details how the collapse of corporate gang governance and social media’s permanent archives turn youth violence into lifelong stigma. By @mkang.bsky.social buff.ly/98uFxpT

Thanks @the-syllabus.bsky.social for featuring my paper, and @benhr.bsky.social for the heads up. What a cool honor! Working paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

As we mourn today's Annunciation Church shooting, the reporting and photojournalism are almost too much to take in; sharing this gift link for those seeking good local coverage from Minneapolis. www.startribune.com/minneapolis-...

Thank you @njgvrc.bsky.social for your invaluable support for my dissertation research!

Join us on August 8 at UIC for this year’s Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS)! #asa (In suppressed voice) Also it’d be great if folks can make a small donation so that we can buy coffee for everyone ☕️

On Juneteenth, we celebrate freedom and recommit ourselves to the work that remains undone. We remember that even in the darkest hours, there is cause to hope for tomorrow’s light.

We’ve updated the FSS proxy for household gun ownership to include 2020–2023. The dataset now spans 1949–2023 and includes state-level estimates of gun ownership, homicide, firearm homicide, and suicide rates. dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

If you're interested in understanding why honour killings happen, my paper with @aksoyundan.bsky.social has some answers. We also suggest ways to reduce them: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

📢 My paper w Aron Szekely on honour-based violence is published online (Open Access): journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.... We explain this puzzling phenomenon applying game-theory and testing it using large-scale data on norms and actual femicides. @sriucl.bsky.social @uclsociology.bsky.social

6 yrs ago an economist asked if I wanted to help him write a book about gun violence. It seemed crazy and fun. Working on this book w/ Jens changed my worldview, introduced me to my partner, and clarified what I want to spend my life doing. I’m grateful to have played a small part & hope you buy it!

A much needed piece and example of strong leadership www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Dissertating in good company

Excited to be assembling a @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social volume on Gun Supply! If you have an idea for a short op-ed on the topic, we’d love to hear it—shoot me a message. 🔍✍️

What an inspiring life www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/b...

This framing of choosing is powerful. We could have less poverty and fewer homicides. But we choose to prioritize other things. @nytimes.com

I've spent the last couple of years w/ young people in Chicago for research on illegal gun carrying. Here're reflections from them (& seasoned experts) and how they've reshaped my thinking on gun research and policy. vitalcitynyc.org/articles/a-better-conversation-on-guns @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social

Watch the video from this @jama.com article on how lower vs higher energy bullets affect muscle tissue. It blew my mind. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Orwell wrote: So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information....

(Big) Pub day! What was once a replication project for my first-year PhD stats class turned into a different beast. Read on for some thoughts on intergenerational mobility along axes of occupational characteristics. (Coauthors @xisong.bsky.social and Yu Xie) www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Added more gun researchers to this starter pack who joined BlueSky. Please share and lmk if you’d like to be added! @daniel-semenza.bsky.social @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social @meganranney.bsky.social @sonalirajan.bsky.social @thetrace.org @giffords.org @everytown.bsky.social go.bsky.app/G9zEmHs

One of my undergrads just grilled me on firearm policy for 1.5 hours and shed light on so many things I don’t fully understand myself but also how much we do know as a firearm research community. It was awesome.

“Gun researchers tend to be abstinence-only researchers. Why not adopt a harm reduction approach?” @brandondelpozo.bsky.social Thought-provoking convo at the #2024FirearmResearchConf workshop on research with the firearm-owning community. @meganranney.bsky.social

Delivered my first lecture this week to UChicago undergrads on @thomasabt.bsky.social's Bleeding Out. Asked students what stood out- they said it was the first time they saw how research could shape policy and realized tackling gun violence is a first-order issue. Cool to witness those moments🧡📚

Check out our new paper on gun carrying over the life course!

We built a starter pack (a work in progress) of some people who know a lot about New York City policy — and assorted others of interest. go.bsky.app/FCDEhhc