Federal restrictions on the sale and possession of some firearms were introduced during Prohibition when illegal rumrunners battling for territorial rights commonly used machine guns to destroy the opposition. More sweeping legislation was not passed until 1968, and from that time on the struggle has been between pro- and anti-control forces, with more controls created at state and local levels than at the federal level. However, the mood in Washington has turned, and the question now is how the country can be weaned away from the violence that pervades every aspect of living, from lawlessness to literature, entertainment, and even children's toys. This book traces the history of these gun control measures from the early days to our own violent age.

This is a study of a part of American history that deals not just with gun control as such, but with basic concepts of personal liberty, government responsibility, and the fear of tyranny. All three of these influenced the people who took up arms in the American Revolution and who, for decades afterward, resisted every effort of the central government to substitute a standing army for the armed militia of the states. As the nation grew in size and population, the need for a standing army became apparent, and the nature of the militia changed from that of a purely state organization to an adjunct of the regular army. Still, the view that private individuals were entitled to purchase and keep firearms for their personal use persisted. That this was not a constitutional right was made clear by the Supreme Court in a series of cases beginning as early as 1876.

Federal restrictions on the sale and possession of some firearms were introduced during Prohibition when illegal rumrunners battling for territorial rights commonly used machine guns to destroy the opposition. More sweeping legislation was not passed until 1968, and from that time on the struggle has been between pro- and anti-control forces, with more controls created at state and local levels than at the federal level. However, the mood in Washington has turned, and the question now is how the country can be weaned from the violence that pervades every aspect of living, from lawlessness to literature, entertainment, and even children's toys.

Ashley Baggett uncovers the voices of abused women who utilized the legal system in New Orleans to address their grievances from the antebellum era to the end of the nineteenth century. Poring over 26,000 records, Baggett analyzes 421 criminal cases involving intimate partner violence - physical or emotional abuse of a partner in a romantic relationship - revealing a significant demand among women, the community, and the courts for reform in the postbellum decades. Before the Civil War, some challenges and limits to the male privilege of chastisement existed, but the gendered power structure and the veil of privacy for families in the courts largely shielded abusers from criminal prosecution. However, the war upended gender expectations and increased female autonomy, leading to the demand for and brief recognition of women's right to be free from violence. Baggett demonstrates how postbellum decades offered a fleeting opportunity for change before the gender and racial expectations hardened with the rise of Jim Crow. Her findings reveal previously unseen dimensions of women's lives both inside and outside legal marriage and women's attempts to renegotiate power in relationships. Highlighting the lived experiences of these women, Baggett tracks how gender, race, and location worked together to define and redefine gender expectations and legal rights. Moreover, she demonstrates recognition of women's legal personhood as well as differences between northern and southern states' trajectories in response to intimate partner violence during the nineteenth century.

The question of sectarianism in Scotland belongs within a wider framework than it has hitherto been placed. It offers insights into continuing, indeed pressing, debates about religious identity and civil and political society in the modern world. This book questions the view that religion and politics do not, and cannot, mix in pluralistic, tolerant and increasingly secular societies, and reveals that memories--bitter memories--can outlive and obscure the demise of actual conflict.

Domestic violence in adolescent romantic relationships is an increasingly important and only recently acknowledged social issue. This book provides conceptual frameworks for the design and evaluation of interventions with a focus on developing evidence based practice, as well as a research, practice and policy agenda for consideration.

The state monopoly of force has increasingly been challenged by non-state actors, seemingly resulting in a loss of control and resources needed to guarantee security. Yet, non-state actors are not only a cause of problems; they can also contribute to guarantee security. The contributors examine the role of non-state actors in the governance of violence and crime. Current research on non-state actors in security points to the fact that the state monopoly of force has increasingly been challenged, seemingly resulting in a loss of control and resources. In contrast, this volume shows how non-state actors are involved in supporting governmental aims, what they contribute and where the limits are or should be. It demonstrates that even in a core area of the state, transnational governance is possible through the activities of a diverse group of actors, including warlords, rebel groups, criminals, non-governmental organizations and businesses.

In Rhetorics of Insecurity, Zeynep Gambetti and Marcial Godoy-Anativia bring together a select group of scholars to investigate the societal ramifications of the present-day concern with security in diverse contexts and geographies. The essays claim that discourses and practices of security actually breed insecurity, rather than merely being responses to the latter. By relating the binary of security/insecurity to the binary of neoliberalism/neoconservatism, the contributors to this volume reveal the tensions inherent in the proliferation of individualism and the concurrent deployment of techniques of societal regulation around the globe. Chapters explore the phenomena of indistinction, reversal of terms, ambiguity, and confusion in security discourses. Scholars of diverse backgrounds interpret the paradoxical simultaneity of the suspension and enforcement of the law through a variety of theoretical and ethnographic approaches, and they explore the formation and transformation of forms of belonging and exclusion. Ultimately, the volume as a whole aims to understand one crucial question: whether securitized neoliberalism effectively spells the end of political liberalism as we know it today. Zeynep Gambetti is Associate Professor of Political Theory at Bogazici University, Istanbul. Marcial Godoy-Anativia is Associate Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University, where he serves as coeditor of its online journal e-misferica.

London, 1716. Revenge is a dish best served ice-cold...The city is caught in the vice-like grip of a savage winter. Even the Thames has frozen over. But for Jonas Flynt - thief, gambler, killer - the chilling elements are the least of his worries... Justice Geoffrey Dumont has been found dead at the base of St Paul's cathedral, and a young male sex-worker, Sam Yates, has been taken into custody for the murder. Yates denies all charges, claiming he had received a message to meet the judge at the exact time of death. The young man is a friend of courtesan Belle St Clair, and she asks Flynt to investigate. As Sam endures the horrors of Newgate prison, they must do everything in their power to uncover the truth and save an innocent life, before the bodies begin to pile up. But time is running out. And the gallows are beckoning... A totally enrapturing portrayal of eighteenth-century London, and a rapier-like crime thriller, perfect for fans of Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Antonia Hodgson and Ambrose Parry.

Mobbing is a destructive social process in which individuals, groups, or organizations target a person for ridicule, humiliation, and removal from the workplace. It can lead to deteriorating physical and mental health, workplace violence, and even suicide. Studies indicate that as many as 37% of American workers have experienced workplace abuse at some time in their working lives. Overcoming Mobbing is an informative, comprehensive guidebook written for the victims of mobbing and their families who often can't make sense of the experience or mobilize resources for recovery. In an engaging, reader-friendly style, the book distinguishes mobbing from bullying in that it takes place within organizational or institutional settings and involves organizational dynamics. Mobbing is not about the occasional negative experience at work; it is ongoing negative acts, both overt and covert, over time, that erode workers' confidence in themselves and in their workplaces and that no amount of sophistication or maturity can make sense of. Duffy and Sperry, leading authorities on this special type of aggression, provide effective strategies for recovery from mobbing as well as for prevention, and they demystify the experience through the use of case vignettes. More than a simple self-help book, this volume brings the concept and terminology relating to mobbing into the public vocabulary by virtue of its strong foundation in psychological and organizational research. It offers a detailed presentation of the causes and consequences of mobbing, helps readers avoid falling into the trap of misplacing blame, and holds organizations at the center of responsibility for preventing the abuse. In addition to those who have experienced mobbing themselves, this book is an invaluable resource for workplace managers and human resources personnel who wish to prevent or reverse mobbing within their own professional settings.

Paddock has referred to societies as "anti-violent" that Inhibit the expressIon of aggresSion. In his book Violence and Aggression, KE. Moyer nas made a brief but interesting comparison of several violent and nonviolent cultures. Whereas studies of violence have ranged from genetic, cultural to Situation effects, and have been pursued through empirical and nonempirical methods over the past several decades, nonviolence did not become a favorite area of study among social scientists. Although it is impossible to make a complete list of the various reasons for the lack of interest among social scientists on this subject, it is generally believed that a lack of understanding of the concept and a failure to either develop or apply adequate methods are to Olame. Therefore we are not surprized that nonviolence has remained, by and large, a favorite topic among religious thinkers and leaders only. A good example of how people have difficulty understanding the concept of nonviolence came to me when I delivered a lecture to a group of political science students several years ago. I experienced similar problems when I spoke to the history and political science professors. Subsequent dialogues with faculty members in other disciplines convinced me that our perspectives on nonVIolence were not commonly clear to all of us. or course, most of us did agree on one thing--that Is, there Is a distinct difference separating Eastern from Western views of nonviolence.

Adrian Raine Department of Psychology. University of Southern California. USA Jose Sanmartin Queen Sojia Center for the Study of Violence. Valencia. Spain The problems that psychopathic and violent offenders create for society are not restricted to North America. Instead, these offenders create havoc throughout the world, including Europe. In recognition of this fact, Queen Sophia of Spain has promoted a Center for the Study of Violence which recognizes both biological and social contributions to the cause of violence. In November 1999, the Queen Sofia Center for the Study of Violence held its IV International Meeting on the Biology and Sociology of Violence. This fourth Meeting, which was under the Honorary Presidency of H. M. The Queen of Spain, examined the biological, psychological and social aspects of the psychopath, the violent offender, and the serial killer. This book presents some of the key contributions made at that conference and which were first published in Spanish in 2000 by Ariel Press. A key thrust of this book, and a stance shared by all of its contributors, is the notion that violence and psychopathy simply cannot be understood solely, or even fundamentally, in terms of social and environmental forces and influences. Nor do biological factors offer an exclusive explanation.

Sociological theory has veered between an insistence on understanding human rights as a genuine universal morality and far more cynical portrayals of human rights as a veil of bourgeois capitalist enterprise. This book criticizes, adapts and combines seemingly disparate elements of contemporary sociological theory within a new approach to human rights. The practicality of the approach is clearly demonstrated in its application to one of the most important, complex and vexing locations of human rights violation in the world: modern Turkey. While sociological analyses of Turkey have largely been limited to local perspectives on individual issues of human rights violation, this book expands sociological understanding of the broad swath of Turkey's human rights violations into a new global perspective of hope and resolution.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. How should we understand home-grown terrorism like the 7/7 London bombings? This is a classic monograph focusing on recent British attempts to 'prevent violent extremism', their problems and limitations, and what lessons this can offer for more effective policy approaches in future. Paul Thomas's extensive research suggests that the Prevent policy approaches, and the wider CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy, have been misguided and ineffective, further alienating British Muslim communities instead of supporting longer-term integration. He argues that new, cohesion-based approaches encouraging greater trust and integration across all communities represent the best defence against terrorism.

Psychologists have done a great deal of research on the effects of trauma on the individual, revealing the paradox that violent experiences are often secreted away beyond easy accessibility, becoming impossible to verbalize explicitly. However, comparatively little research has been done on the transgenerational effects of trauma and the means by which experiences are transmitted from person to person across time to become intrinsic parts of the social fabric. With eight contributions covering Africa, Central and South America, China, Europe, and the Middle East, this volume sheds new light on the role of memory in constructing popular histories - or historiographies - of violence in the absence of, or in contradistinction to, authoritative written histories. It brings new ethnographic data to light and presents a truly cross-cultural range of case studies that will greatly enhance the discussion of memory and violence across disciplines.

Public and academic interest in youth and community violence has grown with school shootings, horrific cases of child abuse, and reports of domestic abuse becoming regular news features. Research on interpersonal violence has had a corresponding progression, but there is a tendency by researchers to examine these issues at the individual level, rather than considering the micro- and macro-level causes, correlates, and outcomes for those affected directly and indirectly by violence.
Edited by four leading violence researchers, Violence in Context takes the more systemic view, offering a critical appraisal of research and theory that focuses on violence in youth, families, and communities. Authors investigate the ways in which violence is defined and understood, how risk and protective factors promote and inhibit violence in the groups most responsible for the socialization of youth, and how violence and related behaviors differ by gender, race, and ethnicity. A rich analysis of the field familiarizes readers with some of the most compelling approaches to violence prevention, including interventions that begin at infancy with families at risk. Every chapter examines the latest research on violence prevention, with a goal of moving towards the multi-system, integrated intervention models and approaches that will incorporate the social context of violence across settings and population subgroups.
The result is a valuable interdisciplinary book for scholars, practitioners, and students that provides a comprehensive overview of published studies, limitations of research findings, and a thoughtful discussion of the ways in which future research can build on what is currently known about the causes, consequences, and prevention of violence in different settings.

Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series, edited by David P. Pierson, explores the contexts, politics, and style of AMC's original series Breaking Bad. The book's first section locates and addresses the series from several contemporary social contexts, including neo-liberalism, its discourses and policies, the cultural obsession with the economy of time and its manipulation, and the epistemological principles and assumptions of Walter White's criminal alias Heisenberg. Section two investigates how the series characterizes and intersects with current cultural politics, such as male angst and the re-emergence of hegemonic masculinity, the complex portrayal of Latinos, and the depiction of physical and mental impairment and disability. The final section takes a close look at the series' distinctive visual, aural, and narrative stylistics. Under examination are Breaking Bad's unique visual style whereby image dominates sound, the distinct role and use of beginning teaser segments to disorient and enlighten audiences, the representation of geographic space and place, the position of narrative songs to complicate viewer identification, and the integral part that emotions play as a form of dramatic action in the series.

In this collection, continental and diasporan African women interrogate the concept "sacred text" and analyze ways oral and written religious "texts" intersect with violence against African-descended women and girls. While the sanctioned idea of a sacred text is written literature, this project interrupts that conception by drawing attention to speech and other embodied practices that have sacral authority within the social imaginary. As a volume focused on religion and violence, essays in this collection analyze religions' authorization of violence against women and girls; contest the legitimacy of some religious "texts"; and affirm other writing, especially memoir, as redemptive. Unraveling and Reweaving Sacred Canon in Africana Womanhood arises from three years of conversation of continental and diasporan women, most recently continued in the July 6-10, 2014 Consultation of African and African Disaporan Women in Religion and Theology and privileges experiences and contexts of continental and diasporan African women and girls. Interlocutors include African traditionalists, Christian Protestants and Catholics, Muslims, and women embodying hybrid practices of these and other traditions.

The battles between Athenian anarchists and the Greek state have received a high degree of media attention recently. But away from the intensity of street protests militants implement anarchist practices whose outcomes are far less visible. They feed the hungry and poor, protect migrants from fascist beatings and try to carve out an autonomous political, social and cultural space. Activists within the movement share politics centred on hostility to the capitalist state and all forms of domination, hierarchy and discrimination. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Athenian anarchists and anti-authoritarians, Anarchy in Athens unravels the internal complexities within this milieu and provides a better understanding of the forces that give the space its shape. -- .

Violent Neoliberalism explores the complex unfolding relationship between neoliberalism and violence. Employing a series of theoretical dialogues on development, discourse and dispossession Cambodia, this study sheds significant empirical light on the vicious implications of free market ideology and practice.

The problem of violence in schools has not gone away despite radical reductions in violent crimes throughout the country over the last decade. Students continue to harrass, haze, and harm each other in a variety of ways, disrupting classrooms and whole schools. In the wake of the Columbine massacre, many focused on the worst kind of school violence: deadly assaults with dangerous weapons. But other forms of violence are more persistent, common, and just as destructive in many ways: fighting, sexual abuse, carrying weapons to school, vandalism, and assorted other crimes that happen behind the closed doors of elementary, middle, and high schools across the country. The consequences range from violent victimization and death, to the disruption of learning and fear among student bodies and teaching staffs. Here, Thomas provides a foundation for understanding why the violence occurs, preventing it from happening, and treating both offenders and victims after it happens. Using scores of case descriptions to illustrate the types of school violence and their treatment in recent years, the author skillfully shows readers how the problem of violence and crime in schools is an insidious issue that cannot go untreated. He offers both tested and proposed methods for dealing with a host of violence issues and a guide to planning treatment of the problem and its associated consequences. He answers the questions: What are prominent types of violence in American schools? What conditions contribute to those types of violence? What methods can be applied in an effort to reduce school violence? Readers will come away from this book with a greater understanding of the scope of violence in America's schools, and the myriad ways of addressing it.

Religiously motivated violence caused by the fusion of state and religion occurred in medieval Tibet and Bhutan, and later in imperial Japan, but interfaith conflict also came after colonial incursions in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Before that time, there was a general premodern harmony among the resident religions of the latter countries, and only in the late nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries did religiously motivated violence break out. While conflict caused by Hindu fundamentalists has been serious and widespread, a combination of medieval Tibetan Buddhists and modern Sri Lankan, Japanese, and Burmese Buddhists has caused the most violence among the Asian religions. However, the Chinese Taiping Christians have the world record for the number of religious killings by one single sect. A theoretical investigation reveals that specific aspects of the Abrahamic religions an insistence on the purity of revelation, a deity who intervenes in history, but one who still is primarily transcendent may be primary causes of religious conflict. Only one factor a mystical monism not favored in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was the basis of a distinctively Japanese Buddhist call for individuals to identify totally with the emperor and to wage war on behalf of a divine ruler. The Origins of Religious Violence: An Asian Perspective uses a methodological heuristic of premodern, modern, and constructive postmodern forms of thought to analyze causes and offer solutions to religious violence."

The bloody, mass sacrifices of the Aztec empire have been documented and decried since the 16th century when the Spanish began using violence to justify their own domination of the Mesoamerican Indian population. Similarly, the violence of the Conquest, and the first years of the Spanish colonial occupation of Mexico, have been discussed and decried. However, researchers and scholars have discussed the violence of both societies only in descriptive terms, rarely attempting to offer explanations for the violence of the two periods. The unique feature of this analysis is a socioeconomic investigation of labor patterns, food production, trade, wealth, population, and environment, providing an explanatory framework for what otherwise appears as senseless and random violence. In this study, Johns analyzes the violence of Aztec and Conquest Mexico from a materialistic perspective.

In a political climate that holds limited promise for addressing the issue of child recruitment, Child Soldiers and Transitional Justice: Protecting the Rights of Children Involved in Armed Conflicts challenges the trend towards a narrow focus on recruitment and use of the child, and seeks to contribute to more effective prevention and responses that offer the child a chance of recovery, reconciliation and reintegration.This book adapts existing theoretical frameworks of transitional justice in order to analyse child recruitment, with a view to demonstrating how a society can address the issue in a holistic way. It systematises relevant knowledge across a wide range of legal fields to allow for greater understanding of the law and principles, and a more informed basis for practical engagement with transitional justice mechanisms.Delving deep into the travaux prparatoires of each of the fundamental legal instruments, the author analyses their evolution, spanning humanitarian law, human rights law, criminal law, and other aspects of public law, including peace agreements and action plans developed with armed groups and forces. He provides a particular focus on and in-depth analysis of the Lubanga case, and its implications for other components of transitional justice. The findings highlight arguments for placing child recruitment firmly on the transitional justice agenda.By considering child recruitment against a transitional justice framework, the book allows a detailed understanding of the distinct but complementary components rule of law, criminal justice, historical justice, reparatory justice, institutional justice, and participatory justice and reveals the untapped potential in interactions between different areas of transitional justice.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Two of the victims of the Columbine massacre, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, reportedly were asked by the gunmen if they believed in God. Both allegedly answered “Yes” and were killed. Within days of their death, Cassie and Rachel were hailed as modern-day Christian martyrs, and became useful symbols for those seeking to advance a conservative political agenda. According to police investigators, however, Cassie and Rachel may never have been asked by their killers about God; they simply may have been victims of a senseless crime rather than martyrs to a cause. As the religious and political use of Cassie and Rachel continues, The Martyrs of Columbine provides a careful examination of the available evidence and attempts to discover what really occurred.