ISIS is losing the propaganda war
Too many dubious claims mean we no longer take them seriously.
James Densley is an assistant professor in the School of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University. He is the author of “How Gangs Work: An Ethnography of Youth Violence” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Densley holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford.
Too many dubious claims mean we no longer take them seriously.
Only legislative action on the Minnesota model of police officer education can save us from more bullets and bloodshed.
Something is happening in the world of sports right now that is so unexpected, so miraculous, that it might just warm a frozen Minnesota heart.
Since the 1960s, social psychologists have documented a “weapons effect,” whereby the mere presence of a weapon increases aggression in people.
Only by starving terrorists of the oxygen of publicity can we hope to challenge the rationalization of their own pathologies and their reputation of power.
The real problem is the 40% of gun transactions that occur in the illegal “secondary market”; the vast majority of weapons in this market are handguns.
Part of the problem is that police officers are trained in how to deal with conflict, not how to counsel youth and defuse typical adolescent drama.
By James Densley
Feb. 28, 2013